m 

;•••.,- 


LIBRARY 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

SANTA  BARBARA 


PRESENTED  BY 

MRS.    MARIE  B.    WOLFARD 


STUDIES    OF 
GOOD    AND    EVIL 


A  SERIES   OF   ESSAYS   UPON   PROBLEMS 
OF   PHILOSOPHY  AND    OF   LIFE 


BY 

JOSIAH   ROYCE 

PROFESSOR   OF  THE  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY 
IN   HARVARD   UNIVERSITY 


NEW  YORK 

D.  APPLETON   AND  COMPANY 
1906 


COPYRIQHT,  1898, 

BY  D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY. 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  01'  CAUFOHMA 
SANTA  BAKBAKA 


INTRODUCTION. 


THE  essays  which  constitute  the  present  volume,  despite 
the  variety  of  their  topics  and  of  the  occasions  under  which 
they  were  prepared,  have  an  unity  which  is  already  indicated 
in  the  title,  but  which  may  well  be  more  explicitly  set  forth 
in  this  introduction. 

As  a  teacher  of  philosophy,  the  author  of  the  papers 
here  collected  has  several  times  given  expression,  in  for- 
mer books,  to  theories  upon  fundamental  metaphysical 
issues.*  These  theories  belong  to  a  type  not  unfamiliar 
in  the  present  speculation,  namely,  to  the  type  of  post- 
Kantian  idealism.  But  the  philosophical  idealist  is  inter- 
ested not  only  in  stating  his  fundamental  convictions,  but 
also  in  applying  them  to  more  concrete  problems,  especially 
to  relatively  practical  problems.  If  idealism  means  any- 
thing, it  means  a  theory  of  the  universe  which  simply  must 
not  be  divorced  from  empirical  considerations,  or  from  the 
business  of  life.  It  is  not,  as  many  have  falsely  supposed,  a 
theory  of  the  world  founded  merely  upon  a  priori  specula- 
tion, and  developed  solely  in  the  closet  It  is,  and  in  its  best 
historical  representatives  always  has  been,  an  effort  to  inter- 

*  Reference  may  be  made  to  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy  (Boa- 
ton,  1885),  to  The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy  (BotOon,  1892),  and  to  the 
author's  most  mature  statement  of  the  argument  for  ideuliam  In  The  Con- 
ception of  God  (New  York,  1897). 

ill 


iv  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

pret  the  facts  of  life.  The  present  is  hardly  the  place  to 
summarize  the  grounds  upon  which  an  idealistic  interpreta- 
tion of  the  world  depends.  In  a  very  brief  summary,  these 
grounds  have  been  indicated  in  one  of  the  essays  of  the 
prevent  volume,  namely,  the  sixth,  entitled  The  Implica- 
tions of  Self-Consciousness.  But  to  many  readers  funda- 
mental metaphysical  arguments  are  sure  to  be  less  enlight- 
ening than  studies  of  more  familiar  issues  in  the  light  of 
philosophical  considerations.  To  such  readers,  as  well  as  to 
more  technical  philosophical  students,  the  present  essays  are 
an  appeal. 

I  have  thus  indicated,  to  readers  who  may  not  already 
know,  the  general  philosophical  position  which  these  papers 
in  common  undertake  to  illustrate.  Yet  I  can  not  wish  to 
leave  upon  the  reader's  mind  the  impression  that  he  is  deal- 
ing merely  with  the  predetermined  product  of  the  thought 
of  a  particular  school.  Idealistic  philosophizing  is,  from  the 
nature  of  the  case,  subject  to  wide  individual  variations. 
Without  any  effort  to  make  extravagant  claims  for  philo- 
sophical originality,  any  life-long  student  of  this  region  of 
inquiry  finds  it  very  natural  to  be  aware  that  in  trying  to 
contribute  to  the  subject  he  has  not  merely  been  reporting 
the  opinions  of  other  people  or  giving  in  his  adherence  to  a 
traditional  doctrine.  I  have  always  insisted  that  my  own 
idealism  does  not  make  me  in  any  sense  worthy  of  being 
called  a  follower,  say,  of  Hegel,  although  of  the  importance 
of  Hegel's  thought  I  am  well  aavare,  and  although,  on  occa- 
sion, in  former  publications,  I  have  given  expression  to  the 
obligations  which,  in  common  with  other  students,  I  feel 
towards  Hegel's  doctrine.  In  many  respects  I  must  insist 
that  I  have  been  quite  as  strongly  influenced  by  Schopen- 
hauer or  by  Fichte  as  by  Hegel;  nor  can  any  student  of 
recent  idealism  be  unaware  that  his  strongest  obligations 
are,  after  all,  to  the  general  tendencies  of  contemporary 
speculation.  In  any  case,  if  it  is  not  one's  duty  to  be  wholly 


INTRODUCTION.  v 

original,  it  is  certainly  one's  natural  purpose,  and  as  far  as 
possible,  one's  obligation,  to  be,  in  philosophical  matters, 
relatively  independent,  both  as  regards  the  manner  in  which 
one  reaches  one's  conclusions,  and  as  regards  the  kind  of  in- 
sight that  one  seeks  to  impart  to  one's  readers.  In  common, 
therefore,  with  other  philosophical  students,  I  am  not  un- 
willing to  have  my  own  opinions  judged  by  and  for  them- 
selves. Accordingly,  I  have  hoped  that  a  collection  of 
papers  like  the  present,  containing  various,  and  necessarily 
individual  applications  of  doctrine  to  special  problems,  may 
serve  to  indicate  in  what  sense  the  philosophical  theses 
that  I  have  to  maintain  possess  a  genuinely  individual 
character. 

I  have  called  these  papers  Studies  of  Good  and  Evil. 
The  title  is  in  its  nature  wide.  It  commits  the  essays  con- 
tained in  this  volume  merely  to  one  common  character. 
They  are  all,  directly  or  indirectly,  contributions  to  the 
comprehension  of  the  ethical  aspects  of  the  universe.  The 
papers  are  of  very  various  relations  to  technical  philosophical 
issues.  Four  of  them  are  essays  in  literary  and  philosoph- 
ical criticism.  One  is  directly  concerned  with  the  effect  of 
the  "  Knowledge  of  Good  and  Evil "  upon  the  character  of  the 
individual  man.  One  is  a  contribution  to  the  metaphysical 
"  Problem  of  Evil  "  in  its  most  general  sense.  Five,  while 
dealing  with  metaphysical  and  psychological  problems  con- 
nected with  the  nature  and  relationships  of  our  human  type 
of  consciousness,  are  somewhat  more  indirect  contributions 
to  the  ethical  interpretation  of  our  place  in  the  universe. 
One  is  an  historical  study  of  a  concrete  conflict  between 
good  and  evil  tendencies  in  early  California  life. 

In  publishing  papers  most  of  which  are  the  product  of 
accidental  calls,  and  were  originally  adjusted  to  various 
occasions,  one  runs  a  certain  risk  of  giving  the  impression 
not  merely  of  miscellaneous  contents,  but  of  minor  incon- 
sistencies in  statement  and  in  the  point  of  view.  Yet  to 


vi  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

attempt  by  artificial  devices  to  bring  such  papers  into  a 
purely  external  unity  by  erasing  all  signs  of  the  original 
occasions  to  which  they  were  adapted  may  in  its  turn  remove 
the  very  character  that  I  have  most  desired  to  preserve  in 
the  present  volume.  It  is  here  simply  not  a  philosophical 
system  as  such,  nor  even  a  systematic  applied  ethics,  nor  yet 
a  rigidly  connected  series  of  discourses  concerning  good  and 
evil  that  I  have  desired  explicitly  to  present  to  the  reader. 
I  have  merely  wished  to  show  how  a  certain  philosophical 
theory,  whose  more  systematic  statement  I  have  in  part 
already  given  elsewhere,  may  be  applied  to  the  study  now 
of  this  and  now  of  that  issue  relating  to  good  and  evil.  I 
have  deliberately  chosen,  therefore,  in  general  not  to  erase 
the  marks  of  the  origin  of  the  individual  papers.  Several 
were  lectures,  and  appear  in  the  text  as  such.  Two  or  three 
were  contributions  to  periodical  literature  specially  called 
out  by  particular  occasions.  All  may  serve  to  show  a  cer- 
tain philosophical  doctrine  at  work,  and  endeavoring  not 
to  remain  an  abstract  theory,  but  to  busy  itself  about  the 
issues  of  life. 

The  series  begins  with  a  paper  entitled  The  Problem  of 
Job.  This  was  originally  the  result  of  a  call  from  a  minis- 
terial convention.  It  was  later  published  in  The  New 
World.  It  deals  in  a  most  general,  and  I  hope  not  at  all  an 
evasive  way,  with  the  metaphysical  and  religious  "  Problem 
of  Evil."  It  presupposes,  and  does  not  endeavor  either  to 
justify  or  with  any  elaboration  to  explain,  the  idealistic 
theory  of  the  nature  of  reality.  Both  my  form  of  this 
theory,  and  my  general  application  thereof  to  the  problem 
of  evil,  were  first  set  forth  in  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Phi- 
losophy. In  my  later  work,  The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philoso- 
phy, published  in  1892,  the  closing  chapter  is  devoted  to  a 
similar  application  of  idealism  to  the  problem  of  evil.  The 
present  discussion  does  not  therefore  stand  alone.  The  the- 
ory of  evil  here  in  question  brings  me  perhaps  into  a  some- 


INTRODUCTION.  vii 

what  more  intimate  relation  with  characteristic  statements 
presented  and  defended  by  Hegel,  than  is  the  case  in  some 
of  my  other  philosophical  theses.  Yet,  in  the  present  essay 
on  the  problem  of  Job,  special  attention  is  given  to  the  psy- 
chological basis  upon  which  every  metaphysical  generaliza- 
tion concerning  the  nature  and  justification  of  evil  may 
be,  I  think,  properly  said  to  be  founded.  Still,  the  reader 
who  chooses  to  compare  with  this  paper  the  papers  in  the 
former  books  mentioned,  may  be  able  to  form  a  clearer 
judgment  both  of  the  meaning,  and  of  the  ground  of  the 
theory  here  presented  than  would  be  possible  from  this  dis- 
cussion alone. 

If  the  theory  of  evil  here  in  question  is  at  all  well  found- 
ed, one  of  the  most  convincing  practical  solutions  of  the 
problem  of  evil  must  be  presented  wherever  we  find  a  good 
man  triumphantly  struggling  with  a  profound  problem  of 
evil  in  his  own  life.  Hence  as  the  second  paper  of  the 
present  volume,  I  have  ventured  to  set  a  psychological 
study  of  a  personal  experience  of  John  Bunyan — an  experi- 
ence known  to  us  as  narrated  by  himself.  This  personal 
experience  of  Bunyan  has  been,  as  I  think,  despite  all  the 
elaborate  biographical  study  that  has  been  given  to  the  poet's 
career,  still  too  much  neglected.  In  the  present  analysis,  I 
have  made  use  of  certain  concepts  that  have  now  become 
familiar  in  modern  psychiatrical  literature.  Yet  I  do  not 
believe  that  a  psychological  analysis  of  such  experiences  as 
these  in  any  wise  hinders  our  interpretation  of  their  ethical 
or,  for  that  matter,  of  their  poetical  meaning.  Bunyan  felt 
himself  to  be  struggling  with  the  "  Tempter,"  with  the  De- 
mon in  personal  presence.  We  have  now  the  power  to  rec- 
ognize, much  more  exactly  than  Bunyan  could  do,  the  nerv- 
ous nature  of  this  enemy.  Yet  in  a  deeper  ethical  meaning, 
the  "  demon's  "  presence  is  none  the  less  a  geriuine  fact  when 
you  have  interpreted  the  psychological  causation  of  the  pro- 
cess in  more  modern  forms.  For  Bunyan  himself,  the  prob- 


viii  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

lem  was  indeed  one  of  moral  struggle,  and  when  he  won, 
and  when,  as  he  says,  he  brought  of  the  "  spoils  of  battle  " 
and  offered  them  in  the  temple  of  the  Lord  for  the  help  of 
his  suffering  brethren,  he  gave  us  an  instance  of  a  concrete 
solution  of  the  problem  of  evil  whose  philosophical  signifi- 
cance is  not  made  less  by  the  fact  that  Bunyan's  theology  is 
no  longer  acceptable  in  Bunyan's  form.  This  paper  was 
originally  written  for  the  American  Psychological  Associa- 
tion, and  appeared  in  the  Psychological  Review. 

The  third  paper  in  the  volume — that  on  Tennyson  and 
Pessimism — appeared  in  a  college  student's  journal,  The 
Harvard  Monthly.  Published  as  it  was  a  considerable 
number  of  years  ago,  this  essay  is  obviously  unsatisfactory 
if  viewed  as  a  characterization  of  the  genius  of  Tennyson, 
who  is  now  so  much  better  known  to  us  through  his  pub- 
lished biography.  Yet  to  my  mind  as  I  wrote  it  the  princi- 
pal interest  of  the  paper  lay  in  its  theory  of  the  relation  be- 
tween good  and  evil.  The  poem  which  forms  the  text  of  the 
discussion  had  in  my  mind  a  merely  illustrative  value. 

The  fourth  paper  of  the  volume  discusses  another  general 
aspect  of  the  relations  between  good  and  evil.  Here  the 
original  occasion  of  the  paper  was  somewhat  polemic.  An 
essay  by  Professor  George  Simmel  of  Berlin,  published  in 
the  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  provoked  some  criti- 
cism, and  I  was  asked  to  take  part  in  the  controversy  ;  but 
the  purely  objective  significance  of  the  issue  served  in  the 
end  to  keep  the  merely  polemic  aspect  rather  in  the  back- 
ground. The  idealistic  theory  of  the  meaning  of  evil  here 
gets  again  presented,  but  this  time  in  reference  to  the  deli- 
cate ethical  question  as  to  how  far  "  the  knowledge  of  evil  " 
contributes  to  moral  perfection.  I  hope  that  this  paper, 
taken  in  connection  with  the  foregoing,  may  serve  to  give 
the  reader  a  general  survey  of  the  principal  applications  of 
the  whole  doctrine. 

These  more  direct  studies  of  good  and  evil  prepare  the 


INTRODUCTION. 


IX 


way  for  a  metaphysical  issue,  namely,  that  of  the  ethical 
interpretation  of  reality,  both  human  and  extra-human. 
This  book  makes  of  course  no  effort  to  contribute  more 
than  fragments  to  the  stupendous  philosophical  undertak- 
ing thus  suggested.  What  fragments  belong  here  are  easily 
characterized.  From  our  modern  point  of  view,  the  ethical 
interpretation  of  the  universe  is  hindered  by  two  especially 
serious  difficulties.  It  is  hindered,  in  the  first  place,  by  the 
general  presuppositions  of  modern  naturalism.  In  the  sec- 
ond place  it  is  hampered  by  our  incomplete  appreciation  of 
the  meaning  and  the  essential  limitations  of  the  human  type 
of  consciousness.  But  a  study  either  of  naturalism  or  of  the 
nature  of  human  consciousness,  must  necessarily  lead  one 
into  very  theoretical  regions,  where  the  ethical  problems 
themselves  are,  for  the  time  being,  in  the  background.  Yet, 
since  our  consciousness  is  the  basis  of  all  the  good  and  evil 
that  we  human  beings  know,  and  since  our  relations  with 
Nature  form  a  most  problematic  aspect  of  life,  both  theo- 
retical and  practical,  I  have  supposed  that  the  essays  from 
the  fifth  to  the  ninth  in  the  present  volume  might  serve  to 
contribute  in  a  genuine  way  to  the  issues  suggested  by  my 
title.  The  fifth  essay  states,  in  the  form  of  a  critical  paper 
suggested  by  a  well-known  lecture  of  Huxley,  the  problem 
with  regard  to  the  general  relation  between  natural  law  and 
the  demands  of  ethics.  This  paper  appeared  in  the  Inter- 
national Journal  of  Ethics.  The  sixth  essay  states  the  gen- 
eral case  for  an  idealistic  interpretation  of  the  universe  in 
its  relations  to  self -consciousness.  This  paper  originally 
appeared  in  the  New  World.  The  question  what  finite  con- 
sciousness with  all  its  burdens  of  good  and  evil  may  under 
these  circumstances  be  and  mean,  is  then  treated  first  in 
some  psychological  particulars  in  the  seventh  essay,  on  the 
Anomalies  of  Self -Consciousness,  and  then  in  connection 
with  cosmological  problems,  in  the  eighth  essay,  on  the 
Relation  between  Human  Consciousness  and  Nature.  The 


x  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

theory  of  evolution  indicated  in  the  latter  part  of  this  essay 
is  one  to  which  I  am  expecting  to  give  a  more  detailed  state- 
ment in  forthcoming  books.  These  papers  were  originally 
printed  in  the  Psychological  Review,  and  in  the  Philosoph- 
ical Review. 

The  theory  of  the  social  basis  of  self -consciousness,  which 
is  common  to  the  seventh  and  to  the  eighth  essays,  is  a  the- 
ory which  has  many  points  in  common  with  the  views  al- 
ready published  by  Professor  Baldwin  in  his  well-known 
works  on  Mental  Development  in  the  Child  and  in  the 
Race.  Professor  Baldwin,  in  his  own  papers  on  this  sub- 
ject, has  frequently  referred  in  the  kindest  way  to  my  own 
work,  whether  published  or  unpublished.  In  return,  I  can 
only  express  both  my  sense  of  my  general  agreement,  as  to 
the  social  theory  of  self-consciousness,  with  Professor  Bald- 
win, and  my  cordial  recognition  of  his  priority  both  in  state- 
ment, and  in  publication,  with  respect  to  a  number  of  the 
most  important  features  of  this  theory.  Students  of  social 
phenomena  may  find  some  interest  both  in  the  purely  psy- 
chological aspects  of  this  theory  of  finite  self-consciousness 
and  in  my  own  suggested  cosmological  extensions  of  the 
theory.  Such  students  of  general  idealism  as  find  the  theory 
of  absolute  self-consciousness  too  abstract  and  seemingly  too 
a  priori  to  win  their  easy  assent,  may  also  be  interested  in 
seeing  by  what  means  at  least  one  student  of  idealism  en- 
deavors to  bridge  the  gulf  that  at  the  outset  seems  to  sepa- 
rate any  psychological  theory  of  consciousness  from  any 
idealistic  theory  of  reality.  As  a  fact,  I  myself  can  find  no 
hostility  between  the  psychological  interpretation  of  con- 
sciousness and  the  philosophical  interpretation  of  reality  in 
terms  of  consciousness.  The  differences  between  the  two 
are  founded,  in  part,  upon  the  empirical  nature  of  the  psycho- 
logical material  as  contrasted  with  the  general  logical  nature 
of  the  arguments  for  idealism  ;  and,  in  part,  upon  the  differ- 
ence in  the  point  of  view  between  a  psychological  and  a 


INTRODUCTION.  xj 

philosophical  study.  But  a  difference  in  point  of  view  cer- 
tainly does  mean  hostility  in  doctrine.  And  every  interpre- 
tation of  experience  involves  at  once  a  recognition  of  the 
facts  of  experience,  and  a  consideration  of  their  general 
logical  meaning.  Sooner  or  later  psychology  and  philoso- 
phy must  join  hands  afresh  ;  and  the  more  closely,  in  view 
of  the  fact  that  of  late,  for  many  minds,  they  have  seemed  to 
part  company.  It  belongs  to  the  future  to  suggest  many  of 
the  ways  in  which  this  ultimate  reconciliation  will  take 
place.  I  think  it  is  the  right  of  any  philosophical  student 
who  feels  also,  as  I  do,  an  interest  in  empirical  psychology, 
to  undertake  a  suggestion,  however  fragmentary,  of  the 
union  to  be  brought  about,  and  to  base  this  suggestion  even 
upon  the  facts  already  accessible. 

The  ninth  essay,  originally  contributed  to  the  Harvard 
Monthly,  is  here  given  as  a  supplementary  statement  con- 
cerning certain  general  aspects  of  the  nature  of  human  con- 
sciousness. It  is  intended  to  bring  a  little  more  clearly  to 
light  a  point  whose  philosophical  and  psychological  signifi- 
cance seem  to  me  to  have  been  overlooked,  namely,  the 
fact  that  what  gives  us  the  most  difficult  aspect  of  the  world- 
problem,  and  what  most  impresses  upon  us  the  tragedy  of 
good  and  evil,  as  well  as  what,  on  the  other  hand,  gives  our 
human  psychology  its  specific  character,  is  the  purely  arbi- 
trary fact  of  the  "  Limitation  of  Span  "  which  characterizes 
the  human  type  of  consciousness.  My  own  thesis  is  that 
the  mere  removal  of  this  one  limitation  would  in  and  of 
itself  involve  a  lifting  of  the  veil  that  is  proverbially  said  to 
"  hide  "  the  reality.  For  reality,  according  to  my  idealism,  is 
simply  the  Whole  of  what  one  actually  means  from  the  finite 
point  of  view.  This  "  whole  of  what  one  means,"  viewed  as 
a  concrete  whole,  viewed  as  a  significant  and  self-possessed 
unity  of  conscious  life,  is,  for  this  idealism,  the  Real  World. 
It  is  also  the  Divine  Life.  Therein  the  problem  of  evil  is 
seen  as  solved.  The  limitations  which  exclude  us,  in  our 


Xll 


STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 


character  as  human  beings,  from  the  concrete  possession  of 
this  ultimate  solution,  are  not  limitations  that  are  to  be  in- 
terpreted as  involving  any  ultimate  separation  between  us 
and  the  reality.  The  "  separation  "  exists  in  truth  only  as  a 
certain  characteristic  limitation  of  conscious  span,  where- 
by our  own  finite  meaning  does  not  become  perfectly  clear 
to  us,  and  our  own  conscious  processes  are  not  themselves, 
to  their  own  very  depths,  presented  to  our  fleeting  finite 
moments  of  consciousness.  In  order  to  grasp  the  nature  of 
reality,  it  would  therefore  not  be  necessary  to  be  something 
else  than  what  we  are,  but  only  to  be  the  Whole  of  what  we 
now  in  substance  and  essence  already  are.  From  grasping 
this  wholeness  of  our  own  meaning  we  are  hindered,  at  any 
moment,  by  the  mere  narrowness  of  the  moment's  view  of 
its  own  sense,  and  not  by  any  gulf  which  separates  us  from 
real  Things  in  Themselves.  The  arguments  for  such  a  doc- 
trine need  of  course  their  own  room.  But  the  application  of 
the  doctrine  both  to  the  theoretical  problems  of  human  self- 
consciousness,  and  to  the  practical  problem  of  evil,  may  be 
made  clearer  by  means  of  the  group  of  essays  now  in  ques- 
tion. 

The  book  closes  with  a  return  to  decidedly  more  special 
issues.  Two  philosophers  are  made  the  topics  of  a  critical 
study  and  portrayal ;  and  in  both  cases  the  portrayal  takes 
up  more  space  than  the  criticism.  I  have  endeavored  to 
make  the  criticism  itself  rather  immanent  than  external. 
In  addition,  one  historical  incident,  in  itself  extremely  in- 
significant, but,  in  its  illustrative  character,  as  interesting  as 
many  another  fragment  of  human  life,  is  made  the  topic  of 
a  discussion  whose  length  has  to  be  frankly  explained  by 
the  persona]  and  local  interests  that  guided  the  author  in 
preparing  this  study.  But  all  these  three  concluding  studies 
have  in  common  their  obvious  relation  to  good  and  evil. 
All  three  of  them  are  instances  of  the  way  in  which  I 
should  try  to  express  the  idealistic  spirit  Idealism  has 


INTRODUCTION.  xiii 

meaning  only  in  case  you  can  judge  whatever  facts  and 
experience  you  please,  or  whatever  varieties  of  philosoph- 
ical opinion  you  may  take  into  account,  in  the  light  of 
idealistic  insight.  Of  these  three  concluding  essays  the 
first,  or,  in  the  order  of  the  papers  in  this  volume,  the  tenth, 
discusses  Meister  Eckhart,  the  German  mystic,  a  figure  who 
has  been  comparatively  neglected  by  those  students  of  phi- 
losophy who  have  written  in  English.  From  a  scholarly 
point  of  view  I  distinctly  feel  the  limitations  of  this  por- 
trayal. Meister  Eckhart  has  been  the  topic  of  some  impor- 
tant recent  researches,  since  the  discovery  of  his  Latin  tracts ; 
and  these  researches  in  some  respects  modify  the  views  of 
his  historical  position  which  were  formerly  maintained.  I 
have  not  been  able  to  take  explicit  account  of  these  most 
recent  investigations.  On  the  other  hand,  I  have  endeav- 
ored to  limit  what  I  had  to  say  of  Eckhart 's  historical  rela- 
tions to  what  may  be  considered,  on  the  whole,  fairly  sure, 
without  entering  upon  more  doubtful  considerations.  The 
general  theoretical  interest  of  a  paper  of  this  sort  lies  in  the 
intimate  relations  which  must  always  exist  between  philo- 
sophical idealism  and  traditional  mysticism.  These  intimate 
relations  I  fully  admit.  Their  practical  as  well  as  their  the- 
oretical interest  I  wholly  recognize,  and  yet  I  am  very  sure 
that  one  is  unfair  to  the  modern  idealist  who  characterizes 
his  doctrine  as  identical  with  the  mysticism  even  of  an  Eck- 
hart. The  actual  contrast  between  the  idealistic  and  the 
mystic  point  of  view  I  have  several  times  discussed,  notably 
in  the  concluding  essays  of  the  book  called  The  Spirit  of 
Modern  Philosophy,  and  in  passing,  in  some  passages  in  the 
third  essay  of  the  present  volume.  The  practical  danger 
of  seeking  one's  relation  to  the  absolute  in  wholly  remote 
realms,  apart  from  concrete  human  experience,  is  not  only 
insisted  upon  in  the  earlier  papers  of  the  present  volume,  but 
is  also  further  illustrated  by  such  concrete  cases  as  are  dis- 
cussed in  the  essay  that,  in  this  volume,  immediately  follows 


xiv  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

the  paper  upon  Meister  Eckhart.  And  once  more,  the  theo- 
retical solution  of  the  problem  is  to  be  sought,  as  I  take  it, 
in  considerations  bearing  upon  the  form  of  human  con- 
sciousness. That  in  some  respects  our  own  consciousness 
would  have  to  be  transformed  before  its  relations  to  reality 
became  directly  clear,  is  of  course  precisely  the  idealistic 
thesis.  On  the  other  hand,  this  transformation  must  not 
mean,  as  the  mystics  desired  it  to  mean,  an  ignoring  of  what 
there  is  positive,  rational,  significant,  about  the  human  type 
of  consciousness  itself  ;  just  as  the  practical  solution  of  the 
struggle  with  evil  can  not  lie  in  such  a  virtue  as  that  which 
Eckhart  made  central,  namely,  the  virtue  which  he  called 
"  Departedness  "  of  soul — Abgescheidenheit.  The  whole  dis- 
cussion of  the  concrete  problem  of  evil,  as  given  in  the  ear- 
lier essays  of  the  present  volume,  ought  to  make  clear  to  any 
fair-minded  reader  the  genuine  contrast  between  the  central 
insights  of  idealism  and  the  characteristic  assertions  of  the 
mystic.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  unquestionable  that  the 
mystic  and  the  idealist  have  much  in  common,  namely, 
precisely  what  the  idealist  would  call  the  truth  of  the  mys- 
tical doctrine ;  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  enormous 
historical  importance  of  mysticism  in  keeping  alive  the 
sense  of  the  intimacy  of  our  human  relation  to  the  divine 
Reality.  Nor  can  any  portrayal  of  mysticism  be  fair  which 
is  not  intimate  and  sympathetic.  Nor  yet  can  any  criticism 
of  mysticism  be  fair  which  goes  far  beyond  the  immanent 
criticism  that  mysticism,  once  fully  portrayed,  passes  upon 
itself.  I  have  endeavored  to  let  Meister  Eckhart,  as  prac- 
tical adviser  of  his  disciples  and  hearers,  himself  state  the 
case  of  the  good  and  evil  of  the  present  life,  and  I  feel  that 
hardly  a  word  need  be  added  to  transform  this  practical  out- 
come of  his  own  doctrine  into  that  willingness  to  accept 
finitude  even  while  seeing  in  finite  life  an  infinite  meaning 
— a  willingness  which  is  to  my  mind  the  very  essence  of  the 
idealistic  spirit 


INTRODUCTION. 


XV 


Immediately  after  this  characterization  of  the  mediaeval 
mystic,  I  have  permitted  my  study  of  California  local  his- 
tory to  follow  as  the  eleventh  paper.  I  can  conceive  of  no 
better  way  to  express  the  intimate  relation  of  every  frag- 
ment with  the  whole,  in  the  universe  as  idealism  conceives 
it,  than  just  some  such  way  as  this ;  and  if  any  reader,  after 
fairly  reading  the  papers  of  the  present  volume,  wonders 
why  this  particular  constellation  of  papers  was  chosen,  I  fear 
that  I  shall  have  written  for  him  quite  in  vain. 

A  series  of  philosophical  essays  may  well  close  with  the 
characterization  of  a  philosopher,  and  I  offer  as  my  twelfth 
paper,  although  not  without  some  hesitation,  my  contribu- 
tion to  the  estimate  of  a  recent  French  philosopher,  J.  M. 
Guyau.  Here  again  the  subject  of  the  essay  has  been  too 
infrequently  presented  to  English  readers.  Here  again  one 
has  a  doctrine  affiliated  with  modern  idealism,  yet  by  no 
means  identical  with  such  idealism,  as  I  myself  should  en- 
deavor to  represent,  and  here  again  one  has  a  distinctly  ethi- 
cal philosophy,  with  whose  discussion  these  studies  of  the 
problem  of  good  and  evil  may  well  close.  The  similarity 
between  the  "sociological"  theory  of  the  finite  world  in 
Guyau's  latest  book,  and  my  own  variety  of  this  same 
theory,  as  stated  in  the  eighth  essay  of  the  present  volume, 
is  plain,  and  is  one  reason  the  more  for  printing  this  final 
paper. 

A  few  further  notes  concerning  the  origin  and  special 
occasions  of  the  various  papers  of  this  volume  will  be  found 
in  connection  with  each.  The  papers  on  Meister  Eckhart 
and  on  Guyau  appear  here  for  the  first  time  in  print.  The 
account  of  the  Squatter  Riot  of  1850  in  Sacramento  was  pub- 
lished in  the  Overland  Monthly,  in  1885. 


CONTENTS. 


FA«B 

I.  THE  PROBLEM  OF  JOB 1 

II.  THE  CASE  OF  JOHN  BUNYAN 29 

III.  TENNYSON  AND  PESSIMISM 76 

IV.  THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL          ....  89 

V.  NATURAL  LAW,  ETHICS,  AND  EVOLUTION  ....  125 

VI.   THE  IMPLICATIONS  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS         .          .          .  140 

VII.  SOME    OBSERVATIONS    ON    THE    ANOMALIES    OF    SELF-CON- 
SCIOUSNESS      169 

VIII.  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS,  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  198 

IX.  ORIGINALITY  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS 249 

X.  MEISTER  ECKHART 261 

XL  AN  EPISODE  OF  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE  :  THE  SQUATTER 

RIOT  OF  1850  IN  SACRAMENTO 298 

XII.  JEAN  MARIE  QUTAU 349 

xvii 


STUDIES  OF   GOOD  AND  EVIL. 


i. 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  JOB. 

IN  speaking  of  the  problem  of  Job,  the  present  writer 
comes  to  the  subject  as  a  layman  in  theology,  and  as  one 
ignorant  of  Hebrew  scholarship.  In  referring  to  the  origi- 
nal core  of  the  Book  of  Job  he  follows,  in  a  general  way, 
the  advice  of  Professor  C.  H.  Toy  ;  and  concerning  the  text 
of  the  poem  he  is  guided  by  the  translation  of  Dr.  Gilbert 
What  this  paper  has  to  attempt  is  neither  criticism  of  the 
book,  nor  philological  exposition  of  its  obscurities,  but  a 
brief  study  of  the  central  problem  of  the  poem  from  the 
point  of  view  of  a  student  of  philosophy. 

The  problem  of  our  book  is  the  personal  problem  of  its 
hero,  Job  himself.  Discarding,  for  the  first,  as  of  possibly 
separate  authorship,  the  Prologue,  the  Epilogue  and  the 
addresses  of  Elihu  and  of  the  Lord,  one  may  as  well  come 
at  once  to  the  point  of  view  of  Job,  as  expressed  in  his 
speeches  to  his  friends.  Here  is  stated  the  problem  of  which 
none  of  the  later  additions  in  our  poem  offer  any  intelligible 
solution.  In  the  exposition  of  this  problem  the  original 
author  develops  all  his  poetical  skill,  and  records  thoughts 
that  can  never  grow  old.  This  is  the  portion  of  our  book 
which  is  most  frequently  quoted,  and  which  best  expresses 
the  genuine  experience  of  suffering  humanity.  Here,  then, 
tin-  philosophical  as  well  as  the  human  interest  of  our  poem 
centres. 

1 


STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 


Job's  world,  as  he  sees  it,  is  organized  in  a  fashion  ex- 
tremely familiar  to  us  all.  The  main  ideas  of  this  cosmol- 
ogy are  easy  to  be  reviewed.  The  very  simplicity  of  the 
scheme  of  the  universe  here  involved  serves  to  bring  into 
clearer  view  the  mystery  and  horror  of  the  problem  that 
besets  Job  himself.  The  world,  for  Job,  is  the  work  of  a 
being  who,  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  ought  to  be  intel- 
ligible (since  he  is  wise),  and  friendly  to  the  righteous,  since, 
according  to  tradition,  and  by  virtue  of  his  divine  wisdom 
itself,  this  God  must  know  the  value  of  a  righteous  man. 
But — here  is  the  mystery — this  God,  as  his  works  get  known 
through  our  human  experiences  of  evil,  appears  to  us  not 
friendly,  but  hopelessly  foreign  and  hostile  in  his  plans  and 
his  doings.  The  more,  too,  we  study  his  ways  with  man,  the 
less  intelligible  seems  his  nature.  Tradition  has  dwelt  upon 
his  righteousness,  has  called  him  merciful,  has  magnified  his 
love  towards  his  servants,  has  described  his  justice  in  bring- 
ing to  naught  the  wicked.  One  has  learned  to  trust  all  these 
things,  to  conceive  God  in  these  terms,  and  to  expect  all  this 
righteous  government  from  him.  Moreover,  tradition  joins 
with  the  pious  observation  of  nature  in  assuring  us  of  the 
omnipotence  of  God.  Job  himself  pathetically  insists  that  he 
never  doubts,  for  an  instant,  God's  power  to  do  whatever 
in  heaven  or  earth  he  may  please  to  do.  Nothing  hinders 
God.  No  blind  faith  thwarts  him.  Sheol  is  naked  before 
him.  The  abyss  has  no  covering.  The  earth  hangs  over 
chaos  because  he  orders  it  to  do  so.  His  power  shatters  the 
monsters  and  pierces  the  dragons.  He  can,  then,  do  with 
evil  precisely  what  he  does  with  Rahab  or  with  the  shades, 
with  the  clouds  or  with  the  light  or  with  the  sea,  namely, 
exactly  what  he  chooses.  Moreover,  since  he  knows  every- 
thing, and  since  the  actual  value  of  a  righteous  man  is,  for 
Job,  an  unquestionable  and  objective  fact,  God  cannot  fail 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  JOB.  3 

to  know  this  real  worth  of  righteousness  in  his  servants, 
as  well  as  the  real  hatefulness  and  mischief  of  the  wicked. 
God  knows  worth,  and  cannot  be  blind  to  it,  since  it  is  as 
real  a  fact  as  heaven  and  earth  themselves. 

Yet  despite  all  these  unquestioned  facts,  this  God.  who 
can  do  just  what  he  chooses,  "  deprives  of  right "  the  right- 
eous man,  in  Job's  own  case,  and  "vexes  his  soul." 
becomes  towards  him  as  a  "  tyrant,"  "  persecutes  "  him  "  with 
strong  hand,"  u  dissolves "  him  "  into  storm,"  makes  him  a 
"  byword "  for  outcasts,  "  casts  "  him  "  into  the  mire,"  ren- 
ders him  "  a  brother  to  jackals,'1  deprives  him  of  the  poor 
joy  of  his  "  one  day  as  a  hireling,"  of  the  little  delight  that 
might  come  to  him  as  a  man  before  he  descends  hopelessly 
to  the  dark  world  of  the  shades,  "  watches  over "  him  by 
day  to  oppress,  by  night  to  "  terrify  "  him  **  with  dreams  and 
with  visions  " — in  brief,  acts  as  his  enemy,  "  tears  "  him  "  in 
anger,"  "  gnashes  upon  "  him  "  with  his  teeth."  All  these 
are  the  expressions  of  Job  himself.  On  the  other  hand,  as. 
with  equal  wonder  and  horror  the  righteous  Job  reports, 
God  on  occasion  does  just  the  reverse  of  all  this  to  the  no- 
toriously and  deliberately  wicked,  who  "  grow  old,"  "  wax 
mighty  in  power,"  "see  their  offspring  established,"  and 
their  homes  "secure  from  fear."  If  one  turns  from  this 
view  of  God's  especially  unjust  dealings  with  righteous  and 
with  wicked  individuals  to  a  general  survey  of  his  provi- 
dential government  of  the  world,  one  sees  vast  processes 
going  on,  as  ingenious  as  they  are  merciless,  as  full  of  hints 
of  a  majestic  wisdom  as  they  are  of  indifference  to  every  indi- 
vidual right 

A  mountain  that  falleth  U  •battered. 

And  a  rock  is  removed  from  it*  place ; 

The  waters  do  wear  away  stooea, 

It*  flood*  aweep  the  earth V  dart  away  ; 

And  the  hope  of  frmil  nun  thou  deatroyert. 

Thoa  *uhdu'»t  him  for  aye,  aad  he  goea ; 

Marring  hi»  face  thou  rejected  him. 


4  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

Here  is  a  mere  outline  of  the  divine  government  as  Job 
sees  it.  To  express  himself  thus  is  for  Job  no  momentary 
outburst  of  passion.  Long  days  and  nights  he  has  brooded 
over  these  bitter  facts  of  experience,  before  he  has  spoken  at 
all.  Unweariedly,  in  presence  of  his  friends'  objections,  he 
reiterates  his  charges.  He  has  the  right  of  the  sufferer  to 
speak,  and  he  uses  it  He  reports  the  facts  that  he  sees.  Of 
the  paradox  involved  in  all  this  he  can  make  nothing. 
What  is  clear  to  him,  however,  is  that  this  paradox  is  a 
matter  for  reasoning,  not  for  blind  authority.  God  ought 
to  meet  him  face  to  face,  and  have  the  matter  out  in  plain 
words.  Job  fears  not  to  face  his  judge,  or  to  demand  his 
answer  from  God.  God  knows  that  Job  has  done  nothing 
to  deserve  this  fury.  The  question  at  issue  between  maker 
and  creature  is  therefore  one  that  demands  a  direct  state- 
ment and  a  clear  decision.  "  Why,  since  you  can  do  pre- 
cisely as  you  choose,  and  since  you  know,  as  all-knower,  the 
value  of  a  righteous  servant,  do  you  choose,  as  enemy,  to 
persecute  the  righteous  with  this  fury  and  persistence  of 
hate  ? "  Here  is  the  problem. 

The  human  interest  of  the  issue  thus  so  clearly  stated  by 
Job  lies,  of  course,  in  the  universality  of  just  such  experi- 
ences of  undeserved  ill  here  upon  earth.  What  Job  saw  of 
evil  we  can  see  ourselves  to-day  whenever  we  choose.  Wit- 
ness Armenia.  Witness  the  tornadoes  and  the  earthquakes. 
Less  interesting  to  us  is  the  thesis  mentioned  by  Job's  friends, 
in  the  antiquated  form  in  which  they  state  it,  although  to 
be  sure,  a  similar  thesis,  in  altered  forms,  is  prevalent  among 
us  still.  And  of  dramatic  significance  only  is  the  earnest- 
ness with  which  Job  defends  his  own  personal  righteousness. 
So  naive  a  self-assurance  as  is  his  is  not  in  accordance  with 
our  modern  conscience,  and  it  is  seldom  indeed  that  our  day 
would  see  any  man  sincerely  using  this  phraseology  of  Job 
regarding  his  own  consciousness  of  rectitude.  But  what  is 
to-day  as  fresh  and  real  to  us  as  it  was  to  our  poet  is  the  fact 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  JOB.  5 

that  all  about  us,  say  in  every  child  born  with  an  unearned 
heredity  of  misery,  or  in  every  pang  of  the  oppressed,  or  in 
every  arbitrary  coming  of  ill  fortune,  some  form  of  inno- 
cence is  beset  with  an  evil  that  the  sufferer  has  not  deserved. 
Job  wins  dramatic  sympathy  as  an  extreme,  but  for  the  pur- 
pose all  the  more  typical,  case  of  this  universal  experience 
of  unearned  ill  fortune.  In  every  such  case  we  therefore 
still  have  the  interest  that  Job  had  in  demanding  the  solu- 
tion of  this  central  problem  of  evil.  Herein,  I  need  not  say, 
lies  the  permanent  significance  of  the  problem  of  Job, — a 
problem  that  wholly  outlasts  any  ancient  Jewish  contro- 
versy as  to  the  question  whether  the  divine  justice  always 
does  or  does  not  act  as  Job's  friends,  in  their  devotion  to 
tradition,  declare  that  it  acts.  Here,  then,  is  the  point 
where  our  poem  touches  a  question,  not  merely  of  an  older 
religion,  but  of  philosophy,  and  of  all  time. 

H. 

The  general  problem  of  evil  has  received,  as  is  well 
known,  a  great  deal  of  attention  from  the  philosophers. 
Few  of  them,  at  least  in  European  thought,  have  been  as 
fearless  in  stating  the  issue  as  was  the  original  author  of 
Job.  The  solutions  offered  have,  however,  been  very  nu- 
merous. For  our  purposes  they  may  be  reduced  to  a  few. 

First,  then,  one  may  escape  Job's  paradox  by  declining 
altogether  to  view  the  world  in  teleological  terms.  Evils, 
such  as  death,  disease,  tempests,  enemies,  fires,  are  not,  so 
one  may  declare,  the  works  of  God  or  of  Satan,  but  are  nat- 
ural phenomena.  Natural,  too,  are  the  phenomena  of  our 
desires,  of  our  pains,  sorrows  and  failures.  No  divine  pur- 
pose rules  or  overrules  any  of  these  things.  That  happens 
to  us,  at  any  time,  which  must  happen,  in  view  of  our  nat- 
ural limitations  and  of  our  ignorance.  The  way  to  better 
things  is  to  understand  nature  better  than  we  now  do.  For 
this  view — a  view  often  maintained  in  our  day — there  is  no 


6  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

problem  of  evil,  in  Job's  sense,  at  all.  Evil  there  indeed  is, 
but  the  only  rational  problems  are  those  of  natural  laws.  I 
need  not  here  further  consider  this  method,  not  of  solving 
but  of  abolishing  the  problem  before  us,  since  my  intent  is, 
in  this  paper,  to  suggest  the  possibility  of  some  genuinely 
teleological  answer  to  Job's  question.  I  mention  this  first 
view  only  to  recognize,  historically,  its  existence. 

In  the  second  place,  one  may  deal  with  our  problem  by 
attempting  any  one,  or  a  number,  of  those  familiar  and 
popular  compromises  between  the  belief  in  a  world  of  nat- 
ural law  and  the  belief  in  a  teleological  order,  which  are 
all,  as  compromises,  reducible  to  the  assertion  that  the  pres- 
ence of  evil  in  the  creation  is  a  relatively  insignificant,  and 
an  inevitable,  incident  of  a  plan  that  produces  sentient  crea- 
tures subject  to  law.  Writers  who  expound  such  compro- 
mises have  to  point  out  that,  since  a  burnt  child  dreads  the 
fire,  pain  is,  on  the  whole,  useful  as  a  warning.  Evil  is  a 
transient  discipline,  whereby  finite  creatures  learn  their  place 
in  the  system  of  things.  Again,  a  sentient  world  cannot  get 
on  without  some  experience  of  suffering,  since  sentience 
means  tenderness.  Take  away  pain  (so  one  still  again  often 
insists),  take  away  pain,  and  we  should  not  learn  our  share 
of  natural  truth.  Pain  is  the  pedagogue  to  teach  us  natural 
science.  The  contagious  diseases,  for  instance,  are  useful  in 
so  far  as  they  lead  us  in  the  end  to  study  Bacteriology,  and 
thus  to  get  an  insight  into  the  life  of  certain  beautiful  crea- 
tures of  God  whose  presence  in  the  world  we  should  other- 
wise blindly  overlook  !  Moreover  (to  pass  to  still  another 
variation  of  this  sort  of  explanation),  created  beings  obvi- 
ously grow  from  less  to  more.  First  the  lower,  then  the 
higher.  Otherwise  there  could  be  no  Evolution.  And  were 
there  no  evolution,  how  much  of  edifying  natural  science 
we  should  miss !  But  if  one  is  evolved,  if  one  grows  from 
less  to  more,  there  must  be  something  to  mark  the  stages  of 
growth.  Now  evil  is  useful  to  mark  the  lower  stages  of 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  JOB.  7 

evolution.  If  you  are  to  be,  first  an  infant,  then  a  man,  or 
first  a  savage,  then  a  civilized  being,  there  must  be  evils 
attendant  upon  the  earlier  stages  of  your  life — evils  that 
make  growth  welcome  and  conscious.  Thus,  were  there  no 
colic  and  croup,  were  there  no  tumbles  and  crying-spells  in 
infancy,  there  would  be  no  sufficient  incentives  to  loving 
parents  to  hasten  the  growing  robustness  of  their  children, 
and  no  motives  to  impel  the  children  to  long  to  grow  big ! 
Just  so,  cannibalism  is  valuable  as  a  mark  of  a  lower  grade 
of  evolution.  Had  there  been  no  cannibalism  we  should 
realize  less  joyously  than  we  do  what  a  respectable  thing  it 
is  to  -have  become  civilized !  In  brief,  evil  is,  as  it  were,  the 
dirt  of  the  natural  order,  whose  value  is  that,  when  you 
wash  it  off,  you  thereby  learn  the  charm  of  the  bath  of 
evolution. 

The  foregoing  are  mere  hints  of  familiar  methods  of 
playing  about  the  edges  of  our  problem,  as  children  play 
barefoot  in  the  shallowest  reaches  of  the  foam  of  the  sea. 
In  our  poem,  as  Professor  Toy  expounds  it,  the  speeches  as- 
cribed to  Elihu  contain  the  most  hints  of  some  such  way  of 
defining  evil,  as  a  merely  transient  incident  of  the  disci- 
pline of  the  individual.  With  many  writers  explanations 
of  this  sort  fill  much  space.  They  are  even  not  without 
their  proper  place  in  popular  discussion.  But  they  have  no 
interest  for  whoever  has  once  come  into  the  presence  of 
Job's  problem  as  it  is  in  itself.  A  moment's  thought  re- 
minds us  of  their  superficiality.  Pain  is  useful  as  a  warn- 
ing of  danger.  If  we  did  not  suffer,  we  should  burn  our 
hands  off.  Yes,  but  this  explanation  of  one  evil  presup- 
poses another,  and  a  still  unexplained  and  greater  evil, 
namely,  the  existence  of  the  danger  of  which  we  need  to  be 
thus  warned.  No  doubt  it  is  well  that  the  past  sufferings  of 
the  Armenians  should  teach  the  survivors,  say  the  defense- 
less women  and  children,  to  have  a  wholesome  fear  in  future 
of  Turks.  Does  that  explain,  however,  the  need  for  the  exist- 


8  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

ence,  or  for  the  murderous  doings  of  the  Turks  ?  If  I  can 
only  reach  a  given  goal  by  passing  over  a  given  road,  say 
of  evolution,  it  may  be  well  for  me  to  consent  to  the  toil- 
some journey.  Does  that  explain  why  I  was  created  so  far 
from  my  goal  ?  Discipline,  toil,  penalty,  surgery,  are  all 
explicable  as  means  to  ends,  if  only  it  be  presupposed  that 
there  exists,  and  that  there  is  quite  otherwise  explicable,  the 
necessity  for  the  situations  which  involve  such  fearful  ex- 
penses. One  justifies  the  surgery,  but  not  the  disease ;  the 
toil,  but  not  the  existence  of  the  need  for  the  toil ;  the  pen- 
alty, but  not  the  situation  which  has  made  the  penalty  neces- 
sary, when  one  points  out  that  evil  is  in  so  many  cases 
medicinal  or  disciplinary  or  prophylactic — an  incident  of 
imperfect  stages  of  evolution,  or  the  price  of  a  distant  good 
attained  through  misery.  All  such  explanations,  I  insist, 
trade  upon  borrowed  capital.  But  God,  by  hypothesis,  is 
no  borrower.  He  produces  his  own  capital  of  ends  and 
means.  Every  evil  is  explained  on  the  foregoing  plan  only 
by  presupposing  at  least  an  equal,  and  often  a  greater  and  a 
preexistent  evil,  namely,  the  very  state  of  things  which  ren- 
ders the  first  evil  the  only  physically  possible  way  of  reach- 
ing a  given  goal.  But  what  Job  wants  his  judge  to  explain 
is  not  that  evil  A  is  a  physical  means  of  warding  off  some 
other  greater  evil  JB,  in  this  cruel  world  where  the  waters 
wear  away  even  the  stones,  and  where  hopes  of  man  are  so 
much  frailer  than  the  stones ;  but  why  a  God  who  can  do 
whatever  he  wishes  chooses  situations  where  such  a  heaped- 
up  mass  of  evil  means  become  what  we  should  call  physical 
necessities  to  the  ends  now  physically  possible. 

No  real  explanation  of  the  presence  of  evil  can  succeed 
which  declares  evil  to  be  a  merely  physical  necessity  for 
one  who  desires,  in  this  present  world,  to  reach  a  given  goal. 
Job's  business  is  not  with  physical  accidents,  but  with  the 
God  who  chose  to  make  this  present  nature ;  and  an  answer 
to  Job  must  show  that  evil  is  not  a  physical  but  a  logical 


THE  PROBLEM  OP  JOB.  9 

necessity — something  whose  non-existence  would  simply  con- 
tradict the  very  essence,  the  very  perfection  of  God's  own 
nature  and  power.  This  talk  of  medicinal  and  disciplinary 
evil,  perfectly  fair  when  applied  to  our  poor  fate-bound 
human  surgeons,  judges,  jailors,  or  teachers,  becomes  cru- 
elly, even  cynically  trivial  w,hen  applied  to  explain  the 
ways  of  a  God  who  is  to  choose,  not  only  the  physical  means 
to  an  end,  but  the  very  Physis  itself  in  which  path  and  goal 
are  to  exist  together.  I  confess,  as  a  layman,  that  whenever, 
at  a  funeral,  in  the  company  of  mourners  who  are  immedi- 
ately facing  Job's  own  personal  problem,  and  who  are  some- 
times, to  say  the  least,  wide  enough  awake  to  desire  not  to 
be  stayed  with  relative  comforts,  but  to  ask  that  terrible  and 
uttermost  question  of  God  himself,  and  to  require  the  direct 
answer — that  whenever,  I  say,  in  such  company  I  have  to 
listen  to  these  half-way  answers,  to  these  superficial  plashes 
in  the  wavelets  at  the  water's  edge  of  sorrow,  while  the 
black,  unfathomed  ocean  of  finite  evil  spreads  out  before 
our  wide-opened  eyes — well,  at  such  times  this  trivial  speech 
about  useful  burns  and  salutary  medicines  makes  me,  and  I 
fancy  others,  simply  and  wearily  heartsick.  Some  words 
are  due  to  children  at  school,  to  peevish  patients  in  the  sick- 
room who  need  a  little  temporary  quieting.  But  quite  other 
speech  is  due  to  men  and  women  when  they  are  wakened  to 
the  higher  reason  of  Job  by  the  fierce  anguish  of  our  mortal 
life's  ultimate  facts.  They  deserve  either  our  simple  silence, 
or,  if  we  are  ready  to  speak,  the  speech  of  people  who  our- 
selves inquire  as  Job  inquired. 

in. 

A  third  method  of  dealing  with  our  problem  is  in  essence 
identical  with  the  course  which,  in  a  very  antiquated  form, 
the  friends  of  Job  adopt  This  method  takes  its  best  known 
expression  in  the  doctrine  that  the  presence  of  evil  in  the 
world  is  explained  by  the  fact  that  the  value  of  free  will  in 


10  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

moral  agents  logically  involves,  and  so  explains  and  justifies, 
the  divine  permission  of  the  evil  deeds  of  those  finite  beings 
who  freely  choose  to  sin,  as  well  as  the  inevitable  fruits  of 
the  sins.  God  creates  agents  with  free  will.  He  does  so  be- 
cause the  existence  of  such  agents  has  of  itself  an  infinite 
worth.  Were  there  no  free  agents,  the  highest  good  could 
not  be.  But  such  agents,  because  they  are  free,  can  offend. 
The  divine  justice  of  necessity  pursues  such  offenses  with 
attendant  evils.  These  evils,  the  result  of  sin,  must,  logi- 
cally speaking,  be  permitted  to  exist,  if  God  once  creates  the 
agents  who  have  free  will,  and  himself  remains,  as  he  must 
logically  do,  a  just  God.  How  much  ill  thus  results  depends 
upon  the  choice  of  the  free  agents,  not  upon  God,  who  wills 
to  have  only  good  chosen,  but  of  necessity  must  leave  his 
free  creatures  to  their  own  devices,  so  far  as  concerns  their 
power  to  sin. 

This  view  has  the  advantage  of  undertaking  to  regard 
evil  as  a  logically  necessary  part  of  a  perfect  moral  order, 
and  not  as  a  mere  incident  of  an  imperfectly  adjusted  phys- 
ical mechanism.  So  dignified  a  doctrine,  by  virtue  of  its 
long  history  and  its  high  theological  reputation,  needs  here 
no  extended  exposition.  I  assume  it  as  familiar,  and  pass  at 
once  to  its  difficulties.  It  has  its  share  of  truth.  There  is,  I 
doubt  not,  moral  free  will  in  the  universe.  But  the  presence 
of  evil  in  the  world  simply  cannot  be  explained  by  free  will 
alone.  This  is  easy  to  show.  One  who  maintains  this  view 
asserts,  in  substance,  "  All  real  evils  are  the  results  of  the 
acts  of  free  and  finite  moral  agents."  These  agents  may  be 
angels  or  men.  If  there  is  evil  in  the  city,  the  Lord  has  not 
done  it,  except  in  so  far  as  his  justice  has  acted  in  readjust- 
ing wrongs  already  done.  Such  ill  is  due  to  the  deeds 
of  his  creatures.  But  hereupon  one  asks  at  once,  in  pres- 
ence of  any  ill,  "Who  did  this?"  Job's  friends  answer: 
"The  sufferer  himself;  his  deed  wrought  his  own  undo- 
ing. God  punishes  only  the  sinner.  Every  one  suffers 


THE  PROBLEM  OP  JOB.  11 

for  his  own  wrongdoing.  Your  ill  is  the  result  of  your 
crime." 

But  Job,  and  all  his  defenders  of  innocence,  must  at  once 
reply :  "  Empirically  speaking,  this  is  obviously,  in  our  visi- 
ble world,  simply  not  true.  The  sufferer  may  suffer  inno- 
cently. The  ill  is  often  undeserved.  The  fathers  sin ;  the 
child,  diseased  from  birth,  degraded,  or  a  born  wretch,  may 
pay  the  penalty.  The  Turk  or  the  active  rebel  sins.  Ar- 
menia's helpless  women  and  babes  cry  in  vain  unto  God 
for  help." 

Hereupon  the  reply  comes,  although  not  indeed  from 
Job's  friends :  "  Alas !  it  is  so.  Sin  means  suffering ;  but 
the  innocent  may  suffer  for  the  guilty.  This,  to  be  sure,  is 
God's  way.  One  cannot  help  it.  It  is  so."  But  therewith 
the  whole  effort  to  explain  evil  as  a  logically  necessary  re- 
sult of  free  will  and  of  divine  justice  alone  is  simply  aban- 
doned. The  unearned  ills  are  not  justly  due  to  the  free  will 
that  indeed  partly  caused  them,  but  to  God  who  declines  to 
protect  the  innocent  God  owes  the  Turk  and  the  rebel 
their  due.  He  also  owes  to  his  innocent  creatures,  the  babes 
and  the  women,  his  shelter.  He  owes  to  the  sinning  father 
his  penalty,  but  to  the  son,  born  in  our  visible  world  a  lost 
soul  from  the  womb,  God  owes  the  shelter  of  his  almighty 
wing,  and  no  penalty.  Thus  Job's  cry  is  once  more  in  place. 
The  ways  of  God  are  not  thus  justified. 

But  the  partisan  of  free  will  as  the  true  explanation  of 
ill  may  reiterate  his  view  in  a  new  form.  He  may  insist 
.that  we  see  but  a  fragment  Perhaps  the  soul  born  here  as 
if  lost,  or  the  wretch  doomed  to  pangs  now  unearned,  sinned 
of  old,  in  some  previous  state  of  existence.  Perhaps  Karma 
is  to  blame.  You  expiate  to-day  the  sins  of  your  own  former 
••xi>tencea  Thus  the  Hindoos  varied  the  theme  of  our  fa- 
miliar doctrine.  This  is  what  Hindoo  friends  might  have 
said  to  Job.  Well,  admit  even  that,  if  you  like ;  and  what 
follows  ?  Admit  that  here  or  in  former  ages  the  free 


12  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

deed  of  every  present  sufferer  earned  as  its  penalty  every  ill, 
physical  or  moral,  that  appears  as  besetting  just  this  sufferer 
to-day.  Admit  that,  and  what  logically  follows  ?  It  fol- 
lows, so  I  must  insist,  that  the  moral  world  itself,  which  this 
free-will  theory  of  the  source  of  evil,  thus  abstractly  stated, 
was  to  save,  is  destroyed  in  its  very  heart  and  centre. 

For  consider.  A  suffers  ill.  B  sees  A  suffering.  Can 
B,  the  onlooker,  help  his  suffering  neighbor,  A  ?  Can  he 
comfort  him  in  any  time  way  ?  No,  a  miserable  comforter 
must  B  prove,  like  Job's  friends,  so  long  as  B,  believing  in 
our  present  hypothesis  clings  strictly  to  the  logic  of  this 
abstract  free-will  explanation  of  the  origin  of  evil.  To  A  he 
says :  "  Well,  you  suffer  for  your  own  ill-doing.  I  therefore 
simply  cannot  relieve  you.  This  is  God's  world  of  justice. 
If  I  tried  to  hinder  God's  justice  from  working  in  your  case, 
I  should  at  best  only  postpone  your  evil  day.  It  would 
come,  for  God  is  just.  You  are  hungry,  thirsty,  naked,  sick, 
in  prison.  What  can  I  do  about  it  ?  All  this  is  your  own 
deed  come  back  to  you.  God  himself,  although  justly  pun- 
ishing, is  not  the  author  of  this  evil.  You  are  the  sole  origi- 
nator of  the  ill."  "Ah !"  so  A  may  cry  out,  "but  can  you 
not  give  me  light,  insight,  instruction,  sympathy  ?  Can  you 
not  at  least  teach  me  to  become  good  ? "  "  No,"  B  must  re- 
ply, if  he  is  a  logical  believer  in  the  sole  efficacy  of  the 
private  free  will  of  each  finite  agent  as  the  one  source,  un- 
der the  divine  justice,  of  that  agent's  ill :  "  No,  if  you  de- 
served light  or  any  other  comfort,  God,  being  just,  would 
enlighten  you  himself,  even  if  I  absolutely  refused.  But  if 
you  do  not  deserve  light,  I  should  preach  to  you  in  vain,  for 
God's  justice  would  harden  your  heart  against  any  such 
good  fortune  as  I  could  offer  you  from  without,  even  if  I 
spoke  with  the  tongues  of  men  and  of  angels.  Your  free 
will  is  yours.  No  deed  of  mine  could  give  you  a  good  free 
will,  for  what  I  gave  you  from  without  would  not  be  your 
free  will  at  all.  Nor  can  any  one  but  you  cause  your  free 


THE  PROBLEM  OP  JOB.  13 

will  to  be  this  or  that.  A  great  gulf  is  fixed  between  us. 
You  and  I,  as  sovereign  free  agents,  live  in  God's  holy  world 
in  sin-tight  compartments  and  in  evil-tight  compartments 
too.  I  cannot  hurt  you,  nor  you  me.  You  are  damned  for 
your  own  sins,  while  all  that  I  can  do  is  to  look  out  for  my 
own  salvation."  This,  I  say,  is  the  logically  inevitable  re- 
sult of  asserting  that  every  ill,  physical  or  moral,  that  can 
happen  to  any  agent,  is  solely  the  result  of  that  agent's  own 
free  will  acting  under  the  government  of  the  divine  justice. 
The  only  possible  consequence  would  indeed  be  that  we 
live,  every  soul  of  us,  in  separate,  as,  it  were  absolutely  fire- 
proof, free-will  compartments,  so  that  real  cooperation  as  to 
good  and  ill  is  excluded.  What  more  cynical  denial  of  the 
reality  of  any  sort  of  moral  world  could  be  imagined  than 
is  involved  in  this  horrible  thesis,  which  no  sane  partisan  of 
the  abstract  and  traditional  free-will  explanation  of  the 
source  of  evil  will  to-day  maintain,  precisely  because  no 
such  partisan  really  knows  or  can  know  what  his  doctrine 
logically  means,  while  still  continuing  to  maintain  it  Yet 
whenever  one  asserts  with  pious  obscurity,  that  "  No  harm 
can  come  to  the  righteous,"  one  in  fact  implies,  with  logical 
necessity,  just  this  cynical  consequence. 

IV. 

There  remains  a  fourth  doctrine  as  to  our  problem. 
This  doctrine  is  in  essence  the  thesis  of  philosophical  ideal- 
ism, a  thesis  which  I  myself  feel  bound  to  maintain,  and,  so 
far  as  space  here  permits,  to  explain.  The  theoretical  basis 
of  this  view,  the  philosophical  reasons  for  the  notion  of  the 
divine  nature  which  it  implies,  I  cannot  here  explain. 
That  is  another  argument  But  I  desire  to  indicate  how  the 
view  in  question  deals  with  Job's  problem. 

This  view  first  frankly  admits  that  Job's  problem  is, 
upon  Job's  presuppositions,  simply  and  absolutely  insolu- 
ble. Grant  Job's  own  presupposition  that  God  is  a  being 


14  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

other  than  this  world,  that  he  is  its  external  creator  and 
ruler,  and  then  ail  solutions  fail.  God  is  then  either  cruel 
or  helpless,  as  regards  all  real  finite  ill  of  the  sort  that  Job 
endures.  Job,  moreover,  is  right  in  demanding  a  reasona- 
ble answer  to  his  question.  The  only  possible  answer  is, 
however,  one  that  undertakes  to  develop  what  I  hold  to  be 
the  immortal  soul  of  the  doctrine  of  the  divine  atonement. 
The  answer  to  Job  is :  God  is  not  in  ultimate  essence  an- 
other being  than  yourself.  He  is  the  Absolute  Being.  You 
truly  are  one  with  God,  part  of  his  life.  He  is  the  very  soul 
of  your  soul.  And  so,  here  is  the  first  truth :  When  you 
suffer,  your  sufferings  are  God" 8  sufferings,  not  his  exter- 
nal work,  not  his  external  penalty,  not  the  fruit  of  his  neg- 
lect, but  identically  his  own  personal  woe.  In  you  God 
himself  suffers,  precisely  as  you  do,  and  has  all  your  con- 
cern in  overcoming  this  grief. 

The  true  question  then  is :  Why  does  God  thus  suffer  ? 
The  sole  possible,  necessary,  and  sufficient  answer  is,  Be- 
cause without  suffering,  without  ill,  without  woe,  evil,  trag- 
edy, God's  life  could  not  be  perfected.  This  grief  is  not  a 
physical  means  to  an  external  end.  It  is  a  logically  neces- 
sary and  eternal  constituent  of  the  divine  life.  It  is  logically 
necessary  that  the  Captain  of  your  salvation  should  be  per- 
fect through  suffering.  No  outer  nature  compels  him.  He 
chooses  this  because  he  chooses  his  own  perfect  selfhood. 
He  is  perfect.  His  world  is  the  best  possible  world.  Yet 
all  its  finite  regions  know  not  only  of  joy  but  of  defeat  and 
sorrow,  for  thus  alone,  in  the  completeness  of  his  eternity, 
can  God  in  his  wholeness  be  triumphantly  perfect. 

This,  I  say,  is  my  thesis.  In  the  absolute  oneness  of  God 
with  the  sufferer,  in  the  concept  of  the  suffering  and  there- 
fore triumphant  God,  lies  the  logical  solution  of  the  problem 
of  evil.  The  doctrine  of  philosophical  idealism  is,  as  regards 
its  purely  theoretical  aspects,  a  fairly  familiar  metaphysical 
theory  at  the  present  time.  One  may,  then,  presuppose  here 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  JOB.  15 

as  known  the  fact  that,  for  reasons  which  I  have  not  now  to 
expound,  the  idealist  maintains  that  there  is  in  the  universe 
but  one  perfectly  real  being,  namely,  the  Absolute,  that  the 
Absolute  is  self-conscious,  and  that  his  world  is  essentially 
in  its  wholeness  the  fulfillment  in  actu  of  an  all-perfect 
ideal.  We  ourselves  exist  as  fragments  of  the  absolute  life, 
or  better,  as  partial  functions  in  the  unity  of  the  absolute 
and  conscious  process  of  the  world.  On  the  other  hand,  our 
existence  and  our  individuality  are  not  illusory,  but  are 
what  they  are  in  an  organic  unity  with  the  whole  life 
of  the  Absolute  Being.  This  doctrine  once  presupposed, 
our  present  task  is  to  inquire  what  case  idealism  can 
make  for  the  thesis  just  indicated  as  its  answer  to  Job's 
problem. 

In  endeavoring  to  grapple  witli  the  theoretical  problem 
of  the  place  of  evil  in  a  world  that,  on  the  whole,  is  to  be 
conceived,  not  only  as  good,  but  as  perfect,  there  is  happily 
one  essentially  decisive  consideration  concerning  good  and 
evil  which  falls  directly  within  the  scope  of  our  own  human 
experience,  and  which  concerns  matters  at  once  familiar 
and  momentous  as  well  as  too  much  neglected  in  philoso- 
phy. When  we  use  such  words  as  good,  evil,  perfect,  we 
easily  deceive  ourselves  by  the  merely  abstract  meanings 
wliich  we  associate  with  each  of  the  terms  taken  apart  from 
the  other.  We  forget  the  experiences  from  which  the  words 
have  been  abstracted.  To  these  experiences  we  must  return 
whenever  we  want  really  to  comprehend  the  words.  If  we 
take  the  mere  words,  in  their  abstraction,  it  is  easy  to  say, 
for  instance,  that  if  life  has  any  evil  in  it  at  all,  it  must 
needs  not  be  so  perfect  as  life  would  be  were  there  no  evil 
in  it  whatever.  Just  so,  speaking  abstractly,  it  is  easy  to 
say  that,  in  estimating  life,  one  has  to  set  the  good  over 
against  the  evil,  and  to  compare  their  respective  sums.  It 
is  easy  to  declare  that,  since  we  hate  evil,  wherever  and  just 
so  far  as  we  recognize  it,  our  sole  human  interest  in  the 
3 


16  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

world  must  be  furthered  by  the  removal  of  evil  from  the 
world.  And  thus  viewing  the  case,  one  readily  comes  to 
say  that  if  God  views  as  not  only  good  but  perfect  a  world 
in  which  we  find  so  much  evil,  the  divine  point  of  view 
must  be  very  foreign  to  ours,  so  that  Job's  rebellious  pes- 
simism seems  well  in  order,  and  Prometheus  appears  to 
defy  the  world-ruler  in  a  genuinely  humane  spirit.  Shocked, 
however,  by  the  apparent  impiety  of  this  result,  some  teach- 
ers, considering  divine  matters,  still  misled  by  the  same 
one-sided  use  of  words,  have  opposed  one  falsely  abstract 
view  by  another,  and  have  strangely  asserted  that  the  solu- 
tion must  be  in  proclaiming  that  since  God's  world,  the  real 
world,  in  order  to  be  perfect,  must  be  without  evil,  what  we 
men  call  evil  must  be  a  mere  illusion — a  mirage  of  the 
human  point  of  view — a  dark  vision  which  God,  who  sees 
all  truth,  sees  not  at  all.  To  God,  so  this  view  asserts,  the 
eternal  world  in  its  wholeness  is  not  only  perfect,  but  has 
merely  the  perfection  of  an  utterly  transparent  crystal,  un- 
stained by  any  color  of  ill.  Only  mortal  error  imagines 
that  there  is  any  evil.  There  is  no  evil  but  only  good  in  the 
real  world,  and  that  is  why  God  finds  the  world  perfect, 
whatever  mortals  dream. 

Now  neither  of  these  abstract  views  is  my  view.  I  con- 
sider them  both  the  result  of  a  thoughtless  trust  in  abstract 
words.  I  regard  evil  as  a  distinctly  real  fact,  a  fact  just  as 
real  as  the  most  helpless  and  hopeless  sufferer  finds  it  to  be 
when  he  is  in  pain.  Furthermore,  I  hold  that  God's  point 
of  view  is  not  foreign  to  ours.  I  hold  that  God  willingly, 
freely,  and  consciously  suffers  in  us  when  we  suffer,  and 
that  our  grief  is  his.  And  despite  all  this  I  maintain  that 
the  world  from  God's  point  of  view  fulfills  the  divine  ideal 
and  is  perfect  And  I  hold  that  when  we  abandon  the  one- 
sided abstract  ideas  which  the  words  good,  evil,  and  perfect 
suggest,  and  when  we  go  back  to  the  concrete  experiences 
upon  which  these  very  words  are  founded,  we  can  see,  even 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  JOB.  17 

within  the  limits  of  our  own  experience,  facts  which  make 
these  very  paradoxes  perfectly  intelligible,  and  even  com- 
monplace. 

As  for  that  essentially  pernicious  view,  nowadays  some- 
what current  amongst  a  certain  class  of  gentle  but  inconse- 
quent people — the  view  that  all  evil  is  merely  an  illusion 
and  that  there  is  no  such  thing  in  God's  world — I  can  say  of 
it  only  in  passing  that  it  is  often  advanced  as  an  idealistic 
view,  but  that,  in  my  opinion,  it  is  false  idealism.  Good 
idealism  it  is  to  regard  all  finite  experience  as  an  appear- 
ance, a  hint,  often  a  very  poor  hint,  of  deeper  truth.  Good 
idealism  it  is  to  admit  that  man  can  err  about  truth  that  lies 
beyond  his  finite  range  of  experience.  And  very  good 
idealism  it  is  to  assert  that  all  truth,  and  so  all  finite  ex- 
perience, exists  in  and  for  the  mind  of  God,  and  nowhere 
outside  of  or  apart  from  God.  But  it  is  not  good  idealism 
to  assert  that  any  facts  which  fall  within  the  range  of  finite 
experience  are,  even  while  they  are  experienced,  mere  illu- 
sions. God's  truth  is  inclusive,  not  exclusive.  What  you 
experience  God  experiences.  The  difference  lies  only  in 
this,  that  God  sees  in  unity  what  you  see  in  fragments.  For 
the  rest,  if  one  said,  "  The  source  and  seat  of  evil  is  only  the 
error  of  mortal  mind,"  one  would  but  have  changed  the 
name  of  one's  problem.  If  the  evil  were  but  the  error, 
the  error  would  still  be  the  evil,  and  altering  the  name 
would  not  have  diminished  the  horror  of  the  evil  of  this 

finite  world. 

v. 

But  I  hasten  from  the  false  idealism  to  the  true ;  from 
the  abstractions  to  the  enlightening  insights  of  our  life.  As 
a  fact,  idealism  does  not  say :  The  finite  world  is,  as  such, 
a  mere  illusion.  A  sound  idealism  says,  whatever  we  expe- 
rience is  a  fragment,  and,  as  far  as  it  goes,  a  genuine  frag- 
ment of  the  truth  of  the  divine  mind.  With  this  principle 
before  us,  let  us  consider  directly  our  own  experiences  of 


18  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

good  and  of  evil,  to  see  whether  they  are  as  abstractly  op- 
posed to  each  other  as  the  mere  words  often  suggest.  We 
must  begin  with  the  elementary  and  even  trivial  facts.  We 
shall  soon  come  to  something  deeper. 

By  good,  as  we  mortals  experience  it,  we  mean  something 
that,  when  it  comes  or  is  expected,  we  actively  welcome,  try 
to  attain  or  keep,  and  regard  with  content.  By  evil  in  gen- 
eral, as  it  is  in  our  experience,  we  mean  whatever  we  find  in 
any  sense  repugnant  and  intolerable.  I  use  the  words  re- 
pugnant and  intolerable  because  I  wish  to  indicate  that 
words  for  evil  frequently,  like  the  words  for  good,  directly 
refer  to  our  actions  as  such.  Commonly  and  rightly,  when 
we  speak  of  evil,  we  make  reference  to  acts  of  resistance,  of 
struggle,  of  shrinking,  of  flight,  of  removal  of  ourselves 
from  a  source  of  mischief — acts  which  not  only  follow  upon 
the  experience  of  evil,  but  which  serve  to  define  in  a  useful 
fashion  what  we  mean  by  evil.  The  opposing  acts  of  pur- 
suit and  of  welcome  define  what  we  mean  by  good.  By  the 
evil  which  we  experience  we  mean  precisely  whatever  we 
regard  as  something  to  be  gotten  rid  of,  shrunken  from,  put 
out  of  sight,  of  hearing,  or  of  memory,  eschewed,  expelled, 
assailed,  or  otherwise  directly  or  indirectly  resisted.  By 
good  we  mean  whatever  we  regard  as  something  to  be  wel- 
comed, pursued,  won,  grasped,  held,  persisted  in,  preserved. 
And  we  show  all  this  in  our  acts  in  presence  of  any  grade  of 
good  or  evil,  sensuous,  aesthetic,  ideal,  moral.  To  shun,  to 
flee,  to  resist,  to  destroy,  these  are  our  primary  attitudes 
towards  ill;  the  opposing  acts  are  our  primary  attitudes 
towards  the  good  ;  and  whether  you  regard  us  as  animals  or 
as  moralists,  whether  it  is  a  sweet  taste,  a  poem,  a  virtue,  or 
God  that  we  look  to  as  good,  and  whether  it  is  a  burn  or  a 
temptation,  an  outward  physical  foe,  or  a  stealthy,  inward, 
ideal  enemy,  that  we  regard  as  evil.  In  all  our  organs  of 
voluntary  movement,  in  all  our  deeds,  in  a  turn  of  the  eye, 
in  a  sigh,  a  groan,  in  a  hostile  gesture,  in  an  act  of  silent 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  JOB.  19 

contempt,  we  can  show  in  endlessly  varied  ways  the  same 
general  attitude  of  repugnance. 

But  man  is  a  very  complex  creature.  He  has  many  or- 
gans. He  performs  many  acts  at  once,  and  he  experiences 
his  performance  of  these  acts  in  one  highly  complex  life  of 
consciousness.  As  the  next  feature  of  his  life  we  all  ob- 
serve that  he  can  at  the  same  time  shun  one  object  and  grasp 
at  another.  In  this  way  he  can  have  at  once  present  to  him 
a  consciousness  of  good  and  a  consciousness  of  ill.  But  so 
far  in  our  account  these  sorts  of  experience  appear  merely 
as  facts  side  by  side.  Man  loves,  and  he  also  hates,  loves 
this,  and  hates  that,  assumes  an  attitude  of  repugnance 
towards  one  object,  while  he  welcomes  another.  So  far  the 
usual  theory  follows  man's  life,  and  calls  it  an  experience  of 
good  and  ill  as  mingled  but  exclusively  and  abstractly  op- 
posed facts.  For  such  a  view  the  final  question  as  to  the 
worth  of  a  man's  life  is  merely  the  question  whether  there 
are  more  intense  acts  of  satisfaction  and  of  welcome  than  of 
repugnance  and  disdain  in  his  conscious  life. 

But  this  is  by  no  means  an  adequate  notion  of  the  com- 
plexity of  man's  life,  even  as  an  animal.  If  every  conscious 
act  of  hindrance,  of  thwarting,  of  repugnance,  means  just 
in  so  far  an  awareness  of  some  evil,  it  is  noteworthy  that 
men  can  have  and  can  show  just  such  tendencies,  not  only 
towards  external  experiences,  but  towards  their  own  acts. 
That  is,  men  can  be  seen  trying  to  thwart  and  to  hinder 
even  their  own  acts  themselves,  at  the  very  moment  when 
they  note  the  occurrence  of  these  acts.  One  can  consciously 
have  an  impulse  to  do  something,  and  at  that  very  moment 
a  conscious  disposition  to  hinder  or  to  thwart  as  an  evil  that 
very  impulse.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  every  conscious  act 
of  attainment,  of  pursuit,  of  reinforcement,  involves  the 
awareness  of  some  good,  it  is  equally  obvious  that  one  can 
show  by  ono's  acts  a  disposition  to  reinforce  or  to  emphasize 
or  to  increase,  not  only  the  externally  present  gifts  of  for- 


20  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

tune,  but  also  one's  own  deeds,  in  so  far  as  one  observes 
them.  And  in  our  complex  lives  it  is  common  enough  to 
find  ourselves  actually  trying  to  reinforce  and  to  insist  upon 
a  situation  which  involves  for  us,  even  at  the  moment  of  its 
occurrence,  a  great  deal  of  repugnance.  In  such  cases  we 
often  act  as  if  we  felt  the  very  thwarting  of  our  own  pri- 
mary impulses  to  be  so  much  of  a  conscious  good  that  we  per- 
sist in  pursuing  and  reinforcing  the  very  situation  in  which 
this  thwarting  and  hindering  of  our  own  impulses  is  sure  to 
arise. 

In  brief,  as  phenomena  of  this  kind  show,  man  is  a  being 
who  can  to  a  very  great  extent  find  a  sort  of  secondary  sat- 
isfaction in  the  very  act  of  thwarting  his  own  desires,  and 
thus  of  assuring  for  the  time  his  own  dissatisfactions.  On 
the  other  hand,  man  can  to  an  indefinite  degree  find  him- 
self dissatisfied  with  his  satisfactions  and  disposed  to  thwart, 
not  merely  his  external  enemies,  but  his  own  inmost  im- 
pulses themselves.  But  I  now  affirm  that  in  all  such  cases 
you  cannot  simply  say  that  man  is  preferring  the  less  of 
two  evils,  or  the  greater  of  two  goods,  as  if  the  good  and  the 
evil  stood  merely  side  by  side  in  his  experience.  On  the 
contrary,  in  such  cases,  man  is  not  merely  setting  his  acts 
or  his  estimates  of  good  and  evil  side  by  side  and  taking  the 
sum  of  each ;  but  he  is  making  his  own  relatively  primary 
acts,  impulses,  desires,  the  objects  of  all  sorts  of  secondary 
impulses,  desires,  and  reflective  observations.  His  whole 
inner  state  is  one  of  tension  ;  and  he  is  either  making  a  sec- 
ondary experience  of  evil  out  of  his  estimate  of  a  primary 
experience  of  good,  as  is  the  case  when  he  at  once  finds 
himself  disposed  to  pursue  a  given  good  and  to  thwart  this 
pursuit  as  being  an  evil  pursuit ;  or  else  he  is  making  a  sec- 
ondary experience  of  good  out  of  his  primary  experience  of 
evil,  as  when  he  is  primarily  dissatisfied  with  his  situation, 
but  yet  secondarily  regards  this  very  dissatisfaction  as  itself 
a  desirable  state.  In  this  way  man  comes  not  only  to  love 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  JOB.  21 

some  things  and  also  to  hate  other  things,  he  comes  to  love 
his  own  hates  and  to  hate  his  own  loves  in  an  endlessly 
complex  hierarchy  of  superposed  interests  in  his  own  in- 
terests. 

Now  it  is  easy  to  say  that  such  states  of  inner  tension, 
where  our  conscious  lives  are  full  of  a  warfare  of  the  self 
with  itself,  are  contradictory  or  absurd  states.  But  it  is  easy 
to  say  this  only  when  you  dwell  on  the  words  and  fail  to 
observe  the  facts  of  experience.  As  a  fact,  not  only  our 
lowest  but  our  highest  states  of  activity  are  the  ones  which 
are  fullest  of  this  crossing,  conflict,  and  complex  interrela- 
tion of  loves  and  hates,  of  attractions  and  repugnances.  As 
a  merely  physiological  fact  we  begin  no  muscular  act  with- 
out at  the  same  time  initiating  acts  which  involve  the  in- 
nervation  of  opposing  sets  of  muscles,  and  these  opposing 
sets  of  muscles  hinder  each  other's  freedom.  Every  sort  of 
control  of  movement  means  the  conflicting  play  of  opposed 
muscular  impulses.  We  do  nothing  simple,  and  we  will  no 
complex  act  without  willing  what  involves  a  certain  meas- 
ure of  opposition  between  the  impulses  or  partial  acts  which 
go  to  make  up  the  whole  act.  If  one  passes  from  single  acts 
to  long  series  of  acts,  one  finds  only  the  more  obviously  this 
interweaving  of  repugnance  and  of  acceptance,  of  pursuit 
and  of  flight,  upon  which  every  complex  type  of  conduct 
depends. 

One  could  easily  at  this  point  spend  time  by  dwelling 
upon  numerous  and  relatively  trivial  instances  of  this  inter- 
weaving of  conflicting  motives  as  it  appears  in  all  our  life. 
I  prefer  to  pass  such  instances  over  with  a  mere  mention. 
There  is,  for  instance,  the  whole  marvelous  consciousness  of 
play,  in  its  benign  and  in  its  evil  forms.  In  any  game  that 
fascinates,  one  loves  victory  and  shuns  defeat,  and  yet  as  a 
loyal  supporter  of  the  game  scorns  anything  that  makes 
victory  certain  in  advance ;  thus  as  a  lover  of  fair  play  pre- 
ferring to  risk  the  defeat  that  he  all  the  wlu'le  shuns,  and 


22  STUDIES   OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

partly  thwarting  the  very  love  of  victory  that  from  moment 
to  moment  fires  his  hopes.  There  are,  again,  the  numerous 
cases  in  which  we  prefer  to  go  to  places  where  we  are  sure 
to  be  in  a  considerable  measure  dissatisfied ;  to  engage,  for 
instance,  in  social  functions  that  absorbingly  fascinate  us 
despite  or  even  in  view  of  the  very  fact  that,  as  long  as  they 
continue,  they  keep  us  in  a  state  of  tension  which  makes  us, 
amongst  other  things,  long  to  have  the  whole  occasion  over. 
Taking  a  wider  view,  one  may  observe  that  the  greater  part 
of  the  freest  products  of  the  activity  of  civilization,  in  cere- 
monies, in  formalities,  in  the  long  social  drama  of  flight,  of 
pursuit,  of  repartee,  of  contest  and  of  courtesy,  involve  an 
elaborate  and  systematic  delaying  and  hindering  of  ele- 
mental human  desires,  which  we  continually  outwit,  post- 
pone and  thwart,  even  while  we  nourish  them.  When  stu- 
dents of  human  nature  assert  that  hunger  and  love  rule  the 
social  world,  they  recognize  that  the  elemental  in  human 
nature  is  trained  by  civilization  into  the  service  of  the  high- 
est demands  of  the  Spirit.  But  such  students  have  to  recog- 
nize that  the  elemental  rules  the  higher  world  only  in  so 
far  as  the  elemental  is  not  only  cultivated,  but  endlessly 
thwarted,  delayed,  outwitted,  like  a  constitutional  monarch, 
who  is  said  to  be  a  sovereign,  but  who,  while  he  rules,  must 
not  govern. 

But  I  pass  from  such  instances,  which  in  all  their  uni- 
versality are  still,  I  admit,  philosophically  speaking,  trivial, 
because  they  depend  upon  the  accidents  of  human  nature. 
I  pass  from  these  instances  to  point  out  what  must  be  the 
law,  not  only  of  human  nature,  but  of  every  broader  form 
of  life  as  well.  I  maintain  that  this  organization  of  life  by 
virtue  of  the  tension  of  manifold  impulses  and  interests  is 
not  a  mere  accident  of  our  imperfect  human  nature,  but 
must  be  a  type  of  the  organization  of  every  rational  life. 
There  are  good  and  bad  states  of  tension,  there  are  conflicts 
that  can  only  be  justified  when  resolved  into  some  higher 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  JOB.  23 

form  of  harmony.  But  I  insist  that,  in  general,  the  only 
harmony  that  can  exist  in  the  realm  of  the  spirit  is  the  har- 
mony that  we  possess  when  we  thwart  the  present  but  more 
elemental  impulse  for  the  sake  of  the  higher  unity  of  expe- 
rience ;  as  when  we  rejoice  in  the  endurance  of  the  tragedies 
of  life,  because  they  show  us  the  depth  of  life,  or  when  we 
know  that  it  is  better  to  have  loved  and  lost  than  never  to 
have  loved  at  all,  or  when  we  possess  a  virtue  in  the  mo- 
ment of  victory  over  the  tempter.  And  the  reason  why 
this  is  true  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  more  one's  experience 
fulfills  ideals,  the  more  that  experience  presents  to  one,  not 
of  ignorance,  but  of  triumphantly  wealthy  acquaintance 
with  the  facts  of  manifold,  varied  and  tragic  life,  full  of 
tension  and  thereby  of  unity.  Now  this  is  an  universal  and 
not  merely  human  law.  It  is  not  those  innocent  of  evil 
who  are  fullest  of  the  life  of  God,  but  those  who  in  their 
own  case  have  experienced  the  triumph  over  evil.  It  is  not 
those  naturally  ignorant  of  fear,  or  those  who,  like  Sieg- 
fried, have  never  shivered,  who  possess  the  genuine  experi- 
ence of  courage :  but  the  brave  are  those  who  have  fears, 
but  control  their  fears.  Such  know  the  genuine  virtues  of 
the  hero.  Were  it  otherwise,  only  the  stupid  could  be  per- 
fect heroes. 

To  be  sure  it  is  quite  false  to  say,  as  the  foolish  do,  that 
the  object  of  life  is  merely  that  we  may  "  know  life  "  as  an 
irrational  chaos  of  experiences  of  good  and  of  evil.  But 
knowing  the  good  in  life  is  a  matter  which  concerns  the 
form,  rather  than  the  mere  content  of  life.  One  who  knows 
lifo  wisely  knows  indeed  much  of  the  content  of  life;  but 
he  knows  the  good  of  life  in  so  far  as,  in  the  unity  of  his 
experience,  he  finds  the  evil  of  his  experience  not  abolished, 
but  subordinated,  and  in  so  far  relatively  thwarted  by  a 
control  which  annuls  its  triumph  even  while  experiencing 
its  existence, 


24  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 


VI. 

Generalizing  the  lesson  of  experience  we  may  then  say : 
It  is  logically  impossible  that  a  complete  knower  of  truth 
should  fail  to  know,  to  experience,  to  have  present  to  his 
insight,  the  fact  of  actually  existing  evil.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  equally  impossible  for  one  to  know  a  higher  good 
than  comes  from  the  subordination  of  evil  to  good  in  a  total 
experience.  When  one  first  loving,  in  an  elemental  way, 
whatever  you  please,  himself  hinders,  delays,  thwarts  his 
elemental  interest  in  the  interest  of  some  larger  whole  of 
experience,  he  not  only  knows  more  fact,  but  he  possesses  a 
higher  good  than  would  or  could  be  present  to  one  who  was 
aware  neither  of  the  elemental  impulse,  nor  of  the  thwarting 
of  it  in  the  tension  of  a  richer  life.  The  knowing  of  the 
good,  in  the  higher  sense,  depends  upon  contemplating  the 
overcoming  and  subordination  of  a  less  significant  impulse, 
which  survives  even  in  order  that  it  should  be  subordinated. 
Now  this  law,  this  form  of  the  knowledge  of  the  good,  ap- 
plies as  well  to  the  existence  of  moral  as  to  that  of  sensuous 
ill.  If  moral  evil  were  simply  destroyed  and  wiped  away 
from  the  external  world,  the  knowledge  of  moral  goodness 
would  also  be  destroyed.  For  the  love  of  moral  good  is  the 
thwarting  of  lower  loves  for  the  sake  of  the  higher  organ- 
ization. What  is  needed,  then,  for  the  definition  of  the 
divine  knowledge  of  a  world  that  in  its  wholeness  is  per- 
fect, is  not  a  divine  knowledge  that  shall  ignore,  wipe  out 
and  utterly  make  naught  the  existence  of  any  ill,  whether 
physical  or  moral,  but  a  divine  knowledge  to  which  shall 
be  present  that  love  of  the  world  as  a  whole  which  is  ful- 
filled in  the  endurance  of  physical  ill,  in  the  subordination 
of  moral  ill,  in  the  thwarting  of  impulses  which  survive 
even  when  subordinated,  in  the  acceptance  of  repugnances 
which  are  still  eternal,  in  the  triumph  over  an  enemy  that 
endures  even  through  its  eternal  defeat,  and  in  the  discov- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  JOB.  25 

ery  that  the  endless  tension  of  the  finite  world  is  included 
in  the  contemplative  consciousness  of  the  repose  and  har- 
mony of  eternity.  To  view  God's  nature  thus  is  to  view  his 
nature  as  the  whole  idealistic  theory  views  him,  not  as  the 
Infinite  One  beyond  the  finite  imperfections,  but  as  the  be- 
ing whose  unity  determines  the  very  constitution,  the  lack, 
the  tension,  and  relative  disharmony  of  the  finite  world. 

The  existence  of  evil,  then,  is  not  only  consistent  with 
the  perfection  of  the  universe,  but  is  necessary  for  the  very 
existence  of  that  perfection.  This  is  what  we  see  when  we 
no  longer  permit  ourselves  to  be  deceived  by  the  abstract 
meanings  of  the  words  good  and  evil  into  thinking  that 
these  two  opponents  exist  merely  as  mutually  exclusive 
facts  side  by  side  in  experience,  but  when  we  go  back  to  the 
facts  of  life  and  perceive  that  all  relatively  higher  good,  in 
the  trivial  as  in  the  more  truly  spiritual  realm,  is  known 
only  in  so  far  as,  from  some  higher  reflective  point  of  view, 
we  accept  as  good  the  thwarting  of  an  existent  interest  that 
is  even  thereby  declared  to  be  a  relative  ill,  and  love  a  ten- 
sion of  various  impulses  which  even  thereby  involves,  as 
the  object  of  our  love,  the  existence  of  what  gives  us  aver- 
sion or  grief.  Now  if  the  love  of  God  is  more  inclusive 
than  the  love  of  man,  even  as  the  divine  world  of  experi- 
ence is  richer  than  the  human  world,  we  can  simply  set  no 
human  limit  to  the  intensity  of  conflict,  to  the  tragedies  of 
existence,  to  the  pangs  of  finitude,  to  the  degree  of  moral 
ill,  which  in  the  end  is  included  in  the  life  that  God  not 
only  loves,  but  finds  the  fulfillment  of  the  perfect  ideal.  If 
peace  means  satisfaction,  acceptance  of  the  whole  of  an 
experience  as  good,  and  if  even  we,  in  our  weakness,  can 
frequently  find  rest  in  the  very  presence  of  conflict  and  of 
tension,  in  the  very  endurance  of  ill  in  a  good  cause,  in  the 
hero's  triumph  over  temptation,  or  in  the  mourner's  tearless 
refusal  to  accept  the  lower  comforts  of  forgetfulness,  or  to 
wish  that  the  lost  one's  preciousness  had  been  less  painfully 


26  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

revealed  by  death — well,  if  even  we  know  our  little  share  of 
this  harmony  in  the  midst  of  the  wrecks  and  disorders  of 
life,  what  limit  shall  we  set  to  the  divine  power  to  face  this 
world  of  his  own  sorrows,  and  to  find  peace  in  the  victory 
over  all  its  ills. 

But  in  this  last  expression  I  have  pronounced  the  word 
that  serves  to  link  this  theory  as  to  the  place  of  evil  in  a 
good  world  with  the  practical  problem  of  every  sufferer. 
Job's  rebellion  came  from  the  thought  that  God,  as  a  sover- 
eign, is  far  off,  and  that,  for  his  pleasure,  his  creature  suffers. 
Our  own  theory  comes  to  the  mourner  with  the  assurance : 
"Your  suffering,  just  as  it  is  in  you,  is  God's  suffering.  No 
chasm  divides  you  from  God.  He  is  not  remote  from  you 
even  in  his  eternity.  He  is  here.  His  eternity  means  mere- 
ly the  completeness  of  his  experience.  But  that  complete- 
ness is  inclusive.  Your  sorrow  is  one  of  the  included  facts." 
I  do  not  say :  "  God  sympathizes  with  you  from  without, 
would  spare  you  if  he  could,  pities  you  with  helpless  exter- 
nal pity  merely  as  a  father  pities  his  children."  I  say : 
"  God  here  sorrows,  not  with  but  in  your  sorrow.  Your 
grief  is  identically  his  grief,  and  what  you  know  as  your 
loss,  God  knows  as  his  loss,  just  in  and  through  the  very 
moment  when  you  grieve." 

But  hereupon  the  sufferer  perchance  responds :  "  If  this 
is  God's  loss,  could  he  not  have  prevented  it  ?  To  him  are 
present  in  unity  all  the  worlds ;  and  yet  he  must  lack  just 
this  for  which  I  grieve."  I  respond  :  "  He  suffers  here  that 
he  may  triumph.  For  the  triumph  of  the  wise  is  no  easy 
thing.  Their  lives  are  not  light,  but  sorrowful.  Yet  they 
rejoice  in  their  sorrow,  not,  to  be  sure,  because  it  is  mere 
experience,  but  because,  for  them,  it  becomes  part  of  a  stren- 
uous whole  of  life.  They  wander  and  find  their  home  even 
in  wandering.  They  long,  and  attain  through  their  very 
love  of  longing.  Peace  they  find  in  triumphant  warfare. 
Contentment  they  have  most  of  all  in  endurance.  Sover- 


THE   PROBLEM  OP  JOB.  27 

eignty  they  win  in  endless  service.  The  eternal  world  con- 
tains Gethsemane." 

Yet  the  mourner  may  still  insist :  ''  If  my  sorrow  is  God's, 
his  triumph  is  not  mine.  Mine  is  the  woe.  His  is  the 
peace."  But  my  theory  is  a  philosophy.  It  proposes  to  be 
coherent.  I  must  persist :  "  It  is  your  fault  that  you  are 
thus  sundered  from  God's  triumph.  His  experience  in  its 
wholeness  cannot  now  be  yours,  for  you  just  as  you— this 
individual — are  now  but  a  fragment,  and  see  his  truth  as 
through  a  glass  darkly.  But  if  you  see  his  truth  at  all, 
through  even  the  dimmest  light  of  a  glimmering  reason, 
remember,  that  truth  is  in  fact  your  own  truth,  your  own 
fulfillment,  the  whole  from  which  your  life  cannot  be  di- 
vorced, the  reality  that  you  mean  even  when  you  most 
doubt,  the  desire  of  your  heart  even  when  you  are  most 
blind,  the  perfection  that  you  unconsciously  strove  for  even 
when  you  were  an  infant,  the  complete  Self  apart  from 
whom  you  mean  nothing,  the  very  life  that  gives  your  life 
the  only  value  which  it  can  have.  In  thought,  if  not  in  the 
fulfillment  of  thought,  in  aim  if  not  in  attainment  of  aim, 
in  aspiration  if  not  in  the  presence  of  the  revealed  fact,  you 
can  view  God's  triumph  and  peace  as  your  triumph  and 
peace.  Your  defeat  will  be  no  less  real  than  it  is,  nor  will 
you  falsely  call  your  evil  a  mere  illusion.  But  you  will  see 
not  only  the  grief  but  the  truth,  your  truth,  your  rescue, 
your  triumph." 

Well,  to  what  ill-fortune  does  not  just  such  reasoning 
apply  ?  I  insist :  our  conclusion  is  essentially  universal.  It 
discounts  any  evil  that  experience  may  contain.  All  the 
horrors  of  the  natural  order,  all  the  concealments  of  the 
divine  plan  by  our  natural  ignorance,  find  their  general  re- 
lation to  the  unity  of  the  divine  experience  indicated  in  ad- 
vance by  this  account  of  the  problem  of  evil. 

"  Yes,"  one  may  continue,  "  ill-fortune  you  have  dis- 
covered, but  how  about  moral  evil  ?  What  if  the  sinner 


28  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

now  triumphantly  retorts:  'Aha!  So  my  will  is  God's 
will.  All  then  is  well  with  me.' "  I  reply  :  What  I  have 
said  disposes  of  moral  ill  precisely  as  definitely  as  of  physi- 
cal ill.  What  the  evil  will  is  to  the  good  man,  whose  good- 
ness depends  upon  its  existence,  but  also  upon  the  thwart- 
ing and  the  condemnation  of  its  aim,  just  such  is  the  sinner's 
will  to  the  divine  plan.  God's  will,  we  say  to  the  sinner,  is 
your  will.  Yes,  but  it  is  your  will  thwarted,  scorned,  over- 
come, defeated.  In  the  eternal  world  you  are  seen,  pos- 
sessed, present,  but  your  damnation  is  also  seen  including 
and  thwarting  you.  Your  apparent  victory  in  this  world 
stands  simply  for  the  vigor  of  your  impulses.  God  wills 
you  not  to  triumph.  And  that  is  the  use  of  you  in  the 
world — the  use  of  evil  generally — to  be  hated  but  endured, 
to  be  triumphed  over  through  the  very  fact  of  your  presence, 
to  be  willed  down  even  in  the  very  life  of  which  you  are  a 
part. 

But  to  the  serious  moral  agent  we  say :  What  you  mean 
when  you  say  that  evil  in  this  temporal  world  ought  not  to 
exist,  and  ought  to  be  suppressed,  is  simply  what  God  means 
by  seeing  that  evil  ought  to  be  and  is  endlessly  thwarted,  en- 
dured, but  subordinated.  In  the  natural  world  you  are  the 
minister  of  God's  triumph.  Your  deed  is  his.  You  can 
never  clean  the  world  of  evil ;  but  you  can  subordinate  evil. 
The  justification  of  the  presence  in  the  world  of  the  morally 
evil  becomes  apparent  to  us  mortals  only  in  so  far  as  this 
evil  is  overcome  and  condemned.  It  exists  only  that  it  may 
be  cast  down.  Courage,  then,  for  God  works  in  you.  In 
the  order  of  time  you  embody  in  outer  acts  what  is  for  him 
the  truth  of  his  eternity. 


IL 
THE  CASE  OF  JOHN  BUNYAN. 

THE  casuistry  of  the  numerous  forms  of  insistent  mental 
processes  of  a  pathological  character  has  of  late  years  become 
very  extensive.  The  names  and  sub-classes  of  these  mor- 
bidly insistent  kinds  of  feeling,  thought,  or  volition  have  oc- 
casionally been  multiplied  beyond  any  reason,  until,  in 
view  of  the  endless  "manias"  and  "phobias"1  that  some 
writers  have  been  disposed  to  dignify  with  special  titles,  I 
myself  have  sometimes  wondered  whether  it  would  not  be 
wise  for  some  one,  in  the  interests  of  good  sense,  to  try  to 
check  this  process  by  defining,  as  a  peculiarly  dangerous 
type  of  insistent  impulses,  a  "  new  mental  disorder,"  to  be 
described  as  the  "  mania  "  for  multiplying  words  ending  in 
mania  or  in  phobia.  Meanwhile,  despite  this  inconven- 
ience, and  despite  numerous  hasty  speculations  upon  the 
whole  subject,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  theoretical 
interest  of  these  morbidly  insistent  mental  processes  is  great, 
and  that  the  pathological  secret  and  the  genuine  natural 
classification  of  these  disorders  will  be  such  as  well  to  repay 
the  trouble  of  the  most  minute  study  of  cases,  if  only  that 
secret  ever  comes  to  be  made  out,  and  that  natural  classifi- 
cation is  ever  set  up.  And  while  we  wait  for  further  light, 
the  careful  preliminary  scrutiny  of  cases  is  indeed  the  only 
course  open  to  students  of  psychology. 

The  present  paper  is  but  a  very  modest  contribution  to 
the  casuistry  of  the  morbidly  insistent  mental  processes.  I 


30  STUDIES   OF  GOOD 'AND  EVIL. 

have  no  new  phobia  or  mania  to  define,  and  in  any  case  I 
speak  only  as  student  of  psychology.  The  medical  reader 
might  be  able  to  see  much  more  in  the  documents  to  which 
I  here  wish  to  attract  his  attention  than  I  am  able  to  see. 
My  task  is  simply  one  of  summary  and  report.  The  case  to 
which  I  wish  to  call  attention  is  meanwhile  one  of  peculiar 
interest,  namely,  that  of  the  author  of  the  Pilgrim's  Prog- 
ress. The  principal  document  concerned  is  John  Bunyan's 
remarkable  confession,  entitled  Grace  Abounding  to  the 
Chief  of  Sinners,  an  autobiographical  statement  which 
Bunyan  wrote  and  published,  as  the  title-page  tells  us,  "  for 
the  support  of  the  weak  and  tempted  people  of  God."  This 
little  book  is,  from  the  literary  point  of  view,  of  very  high 
interest,  ranking,  as  I  suppose,  amongst  all  the  author's 
works,  second  only  to  the  great  Pilgrim's  Progress  itself. 
As  a  record  of  human  experience,  the  Grace  Abounding 
will  never  lose  its  charm,  both  for  lovers  of  religious  biog- 
raphy, and  for  admirers  of  honesty,  of  sincerity,  and  of  sim- 
ple pathos.  Nothing  that  can  be  said  as  to  the  psychological 
significance  of  the  author's  recorded  experiences  will  ever 
detract  from  the  worth  of  the  book,  even  when  viewed  just 
as  the  author  viewed  it,  as  a  "support "  for  the  "  weak  and 
tempted."  Bunyan,  as  we  shall  see,  had  at  one  time  a  de- 
cidedly heavy  and  morbid  burden  to  bear.  But,  like  many 
another  nervous  sufferer  of  the  "  strong  type "  (Koch's 
starker  Typus),  Bunyan  carried  this  burden  with  heroic 
perseverance,  and  in  the  end  won  the  mastery  over  it  by  a 
most  instructive  kind  of  self-discipline.  In  view  of  this 
fact,  a  clearer  recognition  of  the  nature  of  the  burden, 
from  the  psychological  point  of  view,  rather  helps  than 
hinders  our  admiration  for  the  author's  genius,  and  our  re- 
spect for  his  unconquerable  manhood.  It  is  this  sort  of 
case,  in  fact,  that  renders  the  study  of  the  nervous  disorders 
so  frequently  associated  with  genius,  a  pursuit  adapted,  in 
very  many  instances,  not  to  cheapen  our  sense  of  the  dig- 


THE  CASE  OP  JOHN  BUNTAN.  31 

nity  of  genius,  but  to  heighten  our  reverence  for  the 
strength  that  could  contend,  as  some  men  of  genius  have 
done,  with  their  disorders,  and  that  could  conquer  the  nerv- 
ous "  Apollyon  "  on  his  own  chosen  battle-ground. 

But  an  estimate  of  Bunyan's  genius  belongs  not  here.  I 
venture  only  to  say  that  I  write  as  an  especially  profound 
admirer  of  this  wonderful  and  untaught  artist,  whose  home- 
ly style  shows  in  almost  every  line  the  born  master,  whose 
simple  realism  in  portraying  human  character  as  he  saw  it 
amongst  the  live  men  about  him  often  puts  to  shame  the 
ingenuity  of  scores  of  cunning  literary  craftsmen  in  these 
our  own  most  realistic  days,  and  whose  few  highest  flights 
of  poetic  imagination,  such  as  the  closing  scenes  of  the  first 
part  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress,  belong  without  question  in 
the  really  loftiest  regions  of  art.  Range  of  invention,  self- 
control  in  production,  perfect  objectivity  in  the  portrayal  of 
human  life — these  are  leading  traits  in  the  work  of  this 
man  ;  and  these  things,  as  well  as  others  that  we  shall  later 
see,  forever  forbid  our  classing  Bunyan,  taken  as  a  whole, 
amongst  the  weaklings.  It  is  perfectly  consistent  with  this 
fact,  however,  when  we  find  this  admirable  man  and  artist 
living,  for  a  bitter  and  instructive  period  of  his  early  years, 
a  life  of  stern  conflict  with  a  nervous  foe  of  a  fairly  recog- 
nizable and,  under  the  circumstances,  decidedly  grave  type. 
How,  unaided  and  ignorant,  he  won  the  victory,  is  in  itself 
an  interesting  tale.  And,  for  the  rest,  the  case  tends  to 
throw  light  on  the  interesting  problem  as  to  how  far  the 
presence  of  elaborate  insistent  mental  processes  of  a  morbid 
type  is  of  itself  a  sufficient  indication  of  the  depth  of  the 
"  degeneracy "  of  constitution  of  the  subject  who  is  for  a 
time  burdened  with  them.*  That  Bunyan's  malady  must 


*  The  frequent  association  of  the  morbidly  insistent  processes  with  the 
nervously  "  degenerate  "  type  is  a  commonplace  in  the  literature  of  the  sub- 
ject, and  a  few  yean  since  it  was,  1  believe,  an  almost  if  not  quite  universal 
4 


32  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

have  had  a  certain  constitutional  basis  will,  I  suppose,  ap- 
pear decidedly  probable  to  most  readers  of  the  following 
summary.  Yet  it  will  be  hard  to  question  the  fact  that, 
quite  apart  from  his  special  creative  abilities,  Bunyan's 
general  constitution — his  extraordinary  and  persistent 
power  of  work,  his  long  endurance  of  very  serious  mental 
and  physical  hardships,  his  reasonably  lengthy  life  of  sixty 
years  (ended  by  an  acute  disease,  due  to  an  exposure),  his 
apparently  even  temper  and  self-possession  in  later  years, 
his  sustained  influence  over  men  as  leader,  adviser,  and 
preacher — when  taken  altogether,  must  give  us  an  idea  of 
his  inherited  organization  that  will,  in  any  event,  stand  in  a 
fairly  strong  contrast  to  the  impression  that  the  temporary 
nervous  disorder  of  his  early  manhood,  if  it  were  taken 
alone,  would  leave  upon  our  minds. 

But  a  deeper  estimate  of  such  things  I  must  leave  to 
more  competent  judges.  I  have  here  only  to  present  the 

facts. 

I. 

John  Bunyan  was  born  November  30,  1628,  and  died 
August  31,  1688.  The  principal  known  facts  of  his  life 
which  bear  in  any  way  upon  the  question  of  his  health  and 
constitution,  apart  from  the  narrative  in  the  Grace 
Abounding,  are  as  follows :  *  Bunyan  was  a  native  of  the 

dogma  that  considerable  masses  of  insistent  fears,  impulses,  or  thoughts 
occurred  only  as  part  of  the  "  stigmata  "  of  degeneracy.  The  possibility  of 
the  development  of  even  elaborate  systems  of  such  insistent  impulses  upon 
a  basis  of  wholly  acquired  neurasthenia  was  maintained  by  Dr.  Cowles,  in 
his  well-known  paper  on  Insistent  and  Fixed  Ideas  in  the  American  Jour- 
nal of  Psychology  (vol.  i.  p.  222  sq.),  and  has  also  been  asserted  by  others. 
*  I  use,  for  the  most  part,  the  principal  recent  biography,  that  of  John 
Brown  (2d  edition,  London,  1886) — an  elaborate  and  extremely  patient  re- 
search into  every  discoverable  detail  relating  to  Bunyan's  family  and  for- 
tunes. Other  recent  accounts  are  those  of  Venables  (in  the  "  Great  Writers  " 
series,  London,  1888)  and  of  Froude  (in  the  "  English  Men  of  Letters" 


THE  CASE  OP  JOHN  BUNYAN.        33 

little  village  of  Elstow,  near  Bedford.  His  family  can  be 
traced  in  Bedfordshire  as  far  back  as  1200.  In  the  sixteenth 
century,  an  ancestor  of  Bunyan,  and  the  wife  of  this  ances- 
tor, appear  in  court  records  as  brewers  and  bakers.  Thomas 
Bunyan,  his  grandfather,  was  "a  small  village  trader." 
Difficulties  in  the  courts  are  the  occasion  of  some  of  the 
records  preserved  of  these  ancestors,  but  the  difficulties 
named  are  petty,  e.  g.,  minor  violations  of  excise  laws,  dis- 
respect to  churchwardens,  and  perhaps  religious  nonconfor- 
mity. *  Bunyan's  father  was  notoriously,  like  Bunyan 
himself,  a  "  tinker "  or  "  brasier,"  probably,  says  Brown, 
"  neither  better  nor  worse  than  the  rest  of  the  craftsmen  of 
the  hammer  and  the  forge."  Tinkers  had,  to  be  sure,  in 
that  time  and  place,  a  reputation  as  rather  hard  drinkers ; 
but  on  the  other  hand  they  wandered  much  on  foot,  and  so 
lived  freely  out  of  doors.  Bunyan's  father  lived  until  1676, 
dying  at  seventy-three  years  of  age.  The  poet's  mother  was 
of  a  poor  but  very  honest  and  thrifty  family ;  she  died 
when  John  Bunyan  himself  had  reached  the  age  of  fifteen. 
Little  more  is  known  of  the  family  before  we  reach  our 
poet  himself.  He  was  not  an  only  child.  One  sister  is 
known  to  have  died  early.  One  brother  is  known  to  have 
lived  until  1695. 

Of  John  Bunyan's  childhood  history  we  shall  see  a  little 
soon.  In  youth  he  was  apparently,  until  after  the  time  of 
his  marriage,  of  pretty  lusty  health.  The  "  wicked "  early 
life  of  which  he  speaks  so  severely  in  his  Grace  Abounding 
proves,  on  the  whole,  to  have  been,  physically  speaking,  a 
wholesome  life,  during  all  the  time  preceding  his  marriage 
and  his  conversion.  Alcoholic  excesses  and  unchastity  are, 
in  the  opinion  of  all  his  modern  biographers,  nearly  or  quite 

•cries).    The  ground  hut  thus  been  very  thoroughly  gone  over,  for  all 
literary  purpoaea,  in  recent  yean. 
•  Brown,  pp.  27-81. 


34:  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

excluded  by  what  we  most  certainly  know  of  liim  at  this 
time.  At  about  sixteen  years  of  age  Bunyan  was  enrolled  in 
the  army,  probably  on  the  Parliamentary  side,  and  remained 
some  two  years  in  service,  but  apparently  without  any  physi- 
cal ill  effects.  He  married  at  twenty  years  of  age,  both  him- 
self and  his  wife  being  very  poor.  He  now  followed  his 
trade  as  tinker.  Within  the  next  four  years  fall,  first  his 
conversion,  and  then  the  experiences  of  which  we  are  princi- 
pally to  speak  in  what  follows.  In  these  years,  furthermore, 
falls  also  the  birth  of  his  first  child,  a  daughter  who  was 
very  early  blind.  In  1653,  after  he  had  passed  through 
these  principal  experiences,  he  joined  the  church  in  Bed- 
ford. In  1654  his  second  child  was  born,  also  a  daughter. 
In  1655  he  began  that  career  as  preacher  which  he  contin- 
ued thenceforward,  so  far  as  he  was  permitted  to  do  so,  until 
the  end.  In  1660  he  was  imprisoned  in  the  county  jail  at 
Bedford,  for  violating  the  law  by  acting  as  an  irregular 
preacher  ;  and  there  he  remained,  in  a  confinement  which 
varied  in  its  degrees  of  strictness,  for  some  twelve  years. 
The  physical  strain  of  this  imprisonment  must  have  been 
great,  and  the  mental  anxieties  involved  were  of  the  sever- 
est, as  we  learn  from  his  own  account ;  yet  Bunyan  plainly 
experienced  no  return  of  his  previous  mental  troubles  with 
anything  like  their  old  force.  He  was  now  often  weak  in 
body  and  depressed  in  mind,  but  never  long  despairing. 
He  busied  himself  both  in  preaching  to  his  fellow-prisoners 
and  in  writing.  He  was  released  in  1672.  For  three  years 
thereafter  he  was  at  liberty.  In  1675-6  he  suffered  a  second 
imprisonment,  during  which  it  was,  according  to  recent  re- 
search, that  he  wrote  the  Pilgrim's  Progress.*  Thenceforth 
he  continued  working  as  writer  and  preacher  to  the  end. 
The  list  of  his  works  contains  "  sixty  pieces,"  says  his  first 
bibliographer,  "  and  he  was  sixty  years  of  age."  One  stand- 

*  Brown,  p.  254 ;  Venables,  p.  151. 


THE  CASE  OF  JOHN  BUNYAN.  35 

ard  edition  occupies  four  volumes  octavo.  His  works  are, 
of  course,  largely  theological.  They  are  certainly  laborious 
productions,  even  apart  from  the  genius  involved ;  for  this 
man  was  never  trained  to  write. 

As  to  his  health  otherwise,  we  know  that  after  1653  there 
was  a  time  in  his  early  life  when,  as  he  says,  "  I  was  much 
inclining  to  a  consumption,  wherewith,  about  the  Spring,  I 
was  suddenly  and  violently  seized  with  much  weakness  in 
my  outward  man,  insomuch  that  I  thought  I  could  not  live." 
Other  times,  still  later,  he  mentions,  when  he  was  "  very  ill 
and  weak '' ;  and  he  notes  great  depression  of  spirits  as  char- 
acteristic of  his  state  at  all  such  times.*  Brown  t  holds, 
concerning  Bunyan,  that  "  at  any  time  he  was  far  from 
strong  "  as  to  physical  health.  But  when  one  considers  his 
remarkable  activity  both  as  writer  and  preacher,  and  the 
long  and  severe  strains  to  which  he  had  been  subject  before 
he  reached  sixty  years  of  age,  and  when  one  remembers  also 
the  possibly  hypochondriac  nature  of  the  disorders  of  which 
his  own  account,  as  just  cited,  speaks,  it  seems  hard,  after 
all,  to  form  any  exact  opinion  as  to  the  actual  degree  of  the 
physical  weakness  of  his  constitution.  One  is  disposed  to 
set  the  work  done  and  the  external  sufferings  endured  over 
against  the  rather  meagre  record  of  later  illnesses  in  his  life. 
14  His  friend,"  says  Brown  (a  friend,  namely,  who  wrote  an 
account  of  Bunyan),  "  tells  us  that  though  he  was  only  sixty 
he  was  worn  out  with  sufferings,  age,  and  often  teaching." 
One  remembers  hereupon  that  a  persecuted  genius  who 
had  written  44 sixty  pieces"  without  having  received  any 
sort  of  early  scholarly  training,  and  who  had  passed 
more  than  twelve  years  in  unjust  imprisonment,  and  all 


*  "  The  Tempter  did  beset  me  strongly  (for  I  find  ho  is  much  for  as- 
saulting tho  soul  when  it  begins  to  approach  towards  tho  grave,  then  in  his 
opportunity)." — Grace  Abounding  (Clarendon  Press  Ed.),  p.  876. 

t  Op.  cit.,  p.  890. 


36  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

his  life  in  struggle,  had  a  right  to  be  somewhat  worn  at 
sixty. 

He  died  of  "  a  violent  fever,"  or,  as  others  say,  of  "  the 
sweating  distemper,"  after  having  been  exposed  to  "  heavy 
rains  and  drenched  to  the  skin  "  while  on  a  preaching  jour- 
ney. Bunyan  was  twice  married.  He  had  in  all  three 
daughters  and  three  sons.  His  first  child,  born  during  the 
time  of  his  early  disorder — a  daughter — was,  as  observed 
above,  blind,  and  died  before  him.  Descendants  of  another 
of  his  daughters  are  the  only  descendants  of  Bunyan  still 
known  to  survive.  The  later  history  of  the  family  is  in- 
complete, but,  as  reported  by  Brown,  contains  nothing  of 
any  note  for  our  present  purpose — no  record,  namely,  of  re- 
markable disease  or  ability. 

Of  Bunyan's  outward  seeming,  in  his  later  years,  we 
have  two  good  accounts  by  contemporaries.  One  runs 
thus: 

"  As  for  his  person,  he  was  tall  of  stature,  strong-boned, 
though  not  corpulent,  somewhat  of  a  ruddy  face,  with  spar- 
kling eyes ; . . .  his  hair  reddish,  but  in  his  latter  days  time  had 
sprinkled  it  with  gray ;  his  nose  well  set,  but  not  declining 
or  bending,  and  his  mouth  moderately  large  ;  his  forehead 
something  high,  and  his  habit  always  plain  and  modest. 
He  appeared  in  countenance  to  be  of  a  stern  and  rough 
temper,  but  in  his  conversation  mild  and  affable,  not  given 
to  loquacity  or  much  discourse  in  company,  unless  some 
urgent  occasion  required  it;  observing  never  to  boast  of 
himself  or  his  parts,  but  rather  to  seem  low  in  his  own 
eyes  and  submit  himself  to  the  judgment  of  others. .  .  . 
He  had  a  sharp  quick  eye,  accomplished  with  an  excellent 
discerning  of  persons,  being  of  good  judgment  and  quick 
wit" 

The  other  account  speaks  of  his  countenance  as  "  grave 
and  sedate,"  and  of  a  sort  to  "  strike  something  of  awe  into 
thorn  that  had  nothing  of  the  fear  of  God."  The  writer  adds 


THE  CASE  OF  JOHN  BUNYAN.  37 

that  his  memory  was  "  tenacious,  it  being  customary  with 
him  to  commit  his  sermons  to  writing  after  he  had  preached 
them."  Bunyan's  executive  ability  in  church  management 
and  discipline  is  also  noted  in  this  account.  As  to  his 
eloquence  as  a  preacher,  all  accounts  agree.  This*  great 
"  dreamer,"  then,  was  also,  in  his  later  years,  a  man  of  de- 
cided practical  power,  dignified  in  bearing,  accustomed  to 

control  other  men. 

II. 

So  much,  then,  for  the  man  as  a  whole.  As  to  the  ex- 
periences of  his  early  manhood,  recorded  in  the  Grace 
Abounding,  biographers  in  general  have  felt  their  perplex- 
ing intensity  and  abnormity,  but  have  been  accustomed 
either  to  refer  them  once  for  all  to  Bunyan's  theological 
associations  and  ideas,  or  else  to  conceive  them  as  indeed 
somehow  pathological,  but  then  to  define  their  abnormal 
nature  with  the  utmost  looseness  and  confusedness.* 

Patent,  then,  as  are  the  reported  experiences,  beautifully 
as  Bunyan  confesses  them,  transparently  as  he  unveils  him- 
self, one  still  has  to  go  almost  alone  in  trying  to  portray 
their  actual  connections ;  for  biographer  after  biographer 

*  Macaulay,  for  instance,  in  his  Miscellanies,  declares  that,  at  a  certain 
point,  Bunyan's  mind  began  to  be  u  fearfully  disordered  " ;  but  he  then 
proceeds,  with  a  very  undiscriminating  analysis  of  the  data,  to  define  Bun- 
yan's  mental  symptoms  so  that,  if  this  analysis  were  sound,  they  would 
make  up  a  case  of  what  we  should  now  define  as  u  hallucinatory  delirium.'1 
This  Bunyan's  disorder  very  certainly  was  not,  in  any  fashion  whatever. 
Taine,  who,  as  psychologist,  should  have  seen  more  clearly,  is,  in  his  way 
(in  the  account  of  Bunyan  in  the  English  Literature),  almost  equally  con- 
fused as  to  Bunyan's  true  temperament  and  condition,  and  even  imagines 
the  calm  and  self-possessed  art  of  Pilgrim's  Progress  to  be  the  outcome  of 
the  "  inflamed  brain  "  whose  sufferings  are  depicted  in  the  Grace  Abound- 
ing. But  the  Bunyan  of  1650  was  not  yet  the  Bunyan  of  the  Pilgrim'?* 
Progress  of  167.5.  Venables  and  Brown,  well  as  they  summarize  the  salient 
facts,  fail  to  sec  their  psychological  significance.  Froude  also  appears  to 
go  wholly  astray  in  this  respect 


38  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

has  passed  these  connections  by  with  blindfold  eyes.    Yet 
the  story,  read  in  its  psychological  aspect,  is  as  follows  : 

As  a  child  Bunyan  showed  some  of  the  familiar  signs 
of  the  sensitive  brain.  He  is  not  at  all  concerned,  in  his 
Autobiography,  to  gossip  as  to  any  minor  matters.  He  tells 
us  almost  nothing  of  the  externals  of  his  life.  He  is  wholly 
concerned  in  setting  forth  what  God  has  done  for  his  soul. 
He  feels  it  worth  while,  however,  to  describe  to  us,  in  be- 
ginning the  narration  of  his  spiritual  conflicts,  certain  of 
his  early  mental  experiences.  In  childhood,  so  we  learn,  his 
"  cursing,  swearing,  lying,  and  blaspheming "  were  very 
marked  faults.  To  quote  his  own  words  :  "  So  settled  and 
rooted  was  I  in  these  things,  that  they  became  as  a  second 
Nature  to  me.  The  which,  as  I  have  with  soberness  considered 
since,  did  so  offend  the  Lord,  that  even  in  my  Childhood  He 
did  scare  and  affright  me  with  fearful  Dreams,  and  did  terrify 
me  with  dreadful  Visions.  For  often  after  I  had  spent  this 
and  the  other  day  in  sin,  I  have  in  my  Bed  been  greatly 
afflicted,  while  asleep,  with  the  apprehensions  of  Devils  and 
wicked  Spirits,  who  still,  as  I  then  thought,  laboured  to 
draw  me  away  with  them,  of  which  I  could  never  be  rid." 
To  these  persistent  nocturnal  terrors  there  were  added  still 
other  and  evidently  often  waking  troubles,  "thoughts  of 
the  Day  of  Judgment,"  which  gave  him  fears  and  "dis- 
tressed "  his  "  soul,"  "  both  night  and  day,"  so  that  "  I  was 
often  much  cast  down  and  afflicted  .  .  .  yet  could  I  not  let  go 
my  sins."  These  experiences  came  "  when  I  was  but  a  child, 
nine  or  ten  years  old."  "  Yea,"  he  adds,  "  I  was  also  then 
so  overcome  with  despair  of  life  and  heaven,  that  I  should 
often  wish  either  that  there  had  been  no  Hell,  or  that  I  had 
been  a  Devil — supposing  they  were  only  Tormentors ;  that 
if  it  must  needs  be  that  I  went  thither,  I  might  be  rather  a 
Tormentor,  than  tormented  myself."  Of  such  early  suffer- 
ings we  have  several  accounts  besides  the  foregoing  sum- 
mary statements. 


THE  CASE  OF  JOHN  BUNYAN.  39 

Childhood  experiences  of  this  sort  have  to  be  estimated 
as  important  in  direct  proportion  to  their  depth  and  in 
inverse  proportion  to  their  dependence  upon  the  sugges- 
tions to  which  a  given  child  is  subjected.  These  dreams 
were,  plainly,  in  some  instances,  very  elaborate  and  detailed. 
Bunyan's  later  youthful  ignorance,  so  freely  confessed, 
concerning  all  theological  matters  indicates,  however,  that 
these  fears  and  this  despair  were  no  part  of  any  very  co- 
herent system  of  childish  thoughts  on  religious  topics.  The 
content  of  his  "terrible  dreams"  was  of  course  derived 
from  what  he  heard  at  church  and  elsewhere ;  but  a  suf- 
ficient basis,  in  these  suggested  ideas,  for  such  marked 
trouble,  seems  very  improbable.  That  the  nocturnal  terrors 
and  the  despair  were  in  part  primary  symptoms  of  nervous 
irritability,  one  can  thus  hardly  doubt.  As  to  the  depth  of 
the  experiences  themselves,  the  very  fact  of  Bunyan's  care- 
ful report  of  them  is,  under  the  circumstances,  convinc- 
ing. For  his  Autobiography  is,  as  has  just  been  noted, 
extremely  reticent  as  to  all  matters  that  he  does  not  con- 
sider essential  parts  of  the  tale  of  God's  dealings  with  his 
soul. 

In  youth,  at  what  seems  to  have  been  the  healthiest 
period  of  his  life,  these  dreams  left  him,  and  were  "soon 
forgot  ...  as  if  they  never  had  been."  And  now  began 
the  wilful  and  sinful  time  which  Bunyan  later  so  unspar- 
ingly condemns.  That  his  sins  did  not  include  unchastity 
or  drunkenness  seems,  as  aforesaid,  clear  to  all  his  recent 
biographers,  and  for  good  reasons  too,  into  which  I  need  not 
here  enter.  Bunyan  was  now  a  very  active  and  daring  lad, 
who,  in  his  almost  complete  ignorance,  as  Froude  and 
others  have  observed,  had  no  other  way  of  expressing  his 
genius  than  by  "  inventing  lies  to  amuse  his  companions, 
and  swearing  they  were  true  "  (Froude's  expression),  and 
by  showing  extraordinary  ingenuity  as  the  chief  swearer 
and  wild  talker  of  the  village,  so  that  even  "  very  loose  and 


40  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

ungodly "  wretches,  as  Bunyan  tells  us,  were  shocked  by 
the  flood  of  bad  language  in  which  this  still  unconscious 
poet  was  moved  to  voice  his  latent  powers.  These  offenses, 
and  the  still  worse  crime  of  playing  tip-cat  on  Sundays, 
abide  later  in  Bunyan's  memory  as  evidences  of  the  depth 
of  his  lost  condition  during  these  days.  Meanwhile,  despite 
the  vulgarity  of  his  surroundings,  and  the  restless  way- 
wardness of  his  life,  Bunyan  would  otherwise  appear  to 
have  been,  on  the  whole,  an  exceptionally  pure-minded 
youth.  His  early  education,  obtained  in  a  local  school,  was 
extremely  meagre. 

His  boyish  marriage  must  have  involved  serious  respon- 
sibilities. He  and  his  young  wife  had  at  first  not  "  so  much 
household  stuff  as  a  Dish  or  Spoon  "  between  them.  But 
the  wife,  "  whose  Father  was  counted  godly,"  had,  as  her 
inheritance  from  this  now  dead  father,  two  religious  books, 
which  Bunyan  read  with  her,  yet,  so  far  as  he  was  con- 
cerned, without  "  conviction."  But  ere  long  these  books 
and  his  wife's  speech  "  did  beget  within  me  some  desires  to 
religion,"  and  for  a  while  Bunyan  attended  church  busily, 
"  still  retaining  my  wicked  life,"  but  already  feeling  some 
doubtful  concern  as  to  his  own  salvation,  and  much  admi- 
ration for  the  formal  side  of  church  worship.  A  sermon 
against  Sabbath-breaking  brought  him  bis  first  "convic- 
tion." After  service  and  dinner,  that  day,  when  his  full 
stomach  had  made  him  already  cheerfully  forget  his  tran- 
sient remorse,  he  went,  as  usually  on  Sunday  afternoons,  to 
play  his  game  of  cat.  But  having  struck  the  cat  one  blow 
from  the  hole,  "  just  as  I  was  about  to  strike  it  a  second 
time,  a  Voice  did  suddenly  dart  from  Heaven  into  my  Soul, 
which  said,  Wilt  thou  leave  thy  sins  arid  go  to  Heaven,  or 
have  thy  sins  and  go  to  Hell  ?  At  this,"  he  goes  on,  "  I 
was  put  to  an  exceeding  maze.  Wherefore,  leaving  my 
Cat  upon  the  ground,  I  looked  up  to  Heaven,  and  was  as  if 
I  had,  with  the  Eyes  of  my  understanding,  seen  the  Lord 


THE  CASE  OF  JOHN  BUNYAN.  41 

Jesus  looking  down  upon  me,  as  being  very  hotly  dis- 
pleased with  me.  and  as  if  he  did  severely  threaten  me." 
The  result  of  this  sudden  internal  vision,  of  which  he  said 
nothing  to  his  comrades,  was  an  immediate  sense  of  his  gen- 
eral sinfulness,  and  an  overwhelming  despair,  which  kept 
him  standing  "  in  the  midst  of  my  Play,  before  all  that 
were  then  present,"  until,  with  a  swift  dialectic  character- 
istic of  all  his  later  experiences,  he  had  reasoned  out  the 
conclusion  that  it  was  now  too  late,  since  he  had  sinned  so 
much,  and  that  the  only  hope  was  to  go  back  to  sin,  and 
take  his  fill  of  present  sweets.  "  I  can  but  be  damned,  and 
if  I  must  be  so,  I  had  as  good  be  damned  for  many  sins  as 
damned  for  few."  He  thereupon  went  on  with  the  game, 
and  in  the  immediately  subsequent  days  swore,  played,  and 
"  went  on  in  sin  with  great  greediness  of  mind." 

The  automatic  internal  vision,  seen  with  "  the  eyes  of  the 
understanding,"  but  seen  more  or  less  suddenly,  with  extraor- 
dinary detail  and  with  strong  emotional  accompaniment,  ap- 
pears henceforth  as  a  frequent  incident  in  Bunyan's  inner 
life,  and  later  became,  of  course,  the  main  source  of  his  pe- 
culiar artistic  power.  He  was  plainly  always  a  good  vis- 
ualizer.  But  this  automatic  organization  of  his  images  was 
an  added  characteristic  of  the  man,  and  an  invaluable  one. 
This  "  power  of  vision  "  remained,  as  the  Pilgrim's  Progress 
itself  shows,  late  in  life;  and  without  it  our  "dreamer's" 
genius  could  not  be  conceived.  In  his  times  of  depression 
these  visions,  in  later  days,  took  on  the  shading  of  his 
mood ;  but  in  themselves  they  were  of  course  signs,  not  of 
depression,  but  of  poetic  power.  Apart  from  other  and  seri- 
ous causes  of  disturbance  they  plainly  never  approached 
near  to  any  hallucinatory  degree ;  and  Bunyan  always  de- 
scribes them  so  as  to  distinguish  them  clearly  from  hal- 
lucinations, even  when  his  condition,  as  described,  is  one  of 
great  agitation. 

Shortly  after  this  time  the  reproof  of  a  neighbor  again 


42  STUDIES  OP   GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

startled  Bunyan  from  his  reckless  ways,  and  he  resolved  to 
begin  in  earnest  the  work  of  reform.  The  result  was  a  pe- 
riod of  a  year  (or  probably  somewhat  less),  during  which  he 
undertook  nothing  less  than  a  systematic  course  of  consci- 
entious self -suppression.  He  "  left "  his  swearing  at  once, 
and  in  a  way  that  astonished  himself.  He  gave  up  his 
games  as  vain  practices;  after  a  long  struggle  he  even 
abandoned  dancing.  He  read  the  Bible  ;  he  lived  a  life  of 
reform  that  astonished  his  neighbors ;  "  for  this  my  conver- 
sion was  as  great  as  for  Tom  of  Bethlem  to  become  a  sober 
man."  Inhibition  of  all  outwardly  suspicious  deeds  became 
the  one  rule  of  his  life.  He  still  wholly  lacked  what  he 
later  regarded  as  true  piety,  and  he  indulged  in  some  spir- 
itual pride  in  view  of  the  approbation  of  his  neighbors  ;  but 
he  cultivated  a  painful  scrupulosity.  We  can  well  conceive 
how  the  material  cares  that  beset  this  very  poor  but  now 
married  youth,  and  this  sudden  change  from  a  careless  life, 
of  numerous  relaxations,  to  an  existence  wherein  every  act 
was  a  matter  of  scruple,  and  wherein  the  opinions  of  all  his 
neighbors  were  now  so  much  taken  into  account,  must  have 
involved  a  considerable  strain.  The  immediate  consequences 
were  characteristic  of  the  whole  case. 

in. 

"  Now  you  must  know,"  says  Bunyan,  "  that  before  this 
I  had  taken  much  delight  in  Ringing,*  but  my  Conscience 
beginning  to  be  tender,  I  thought  such  practice  was  but 
vain,  and  therefore  forced  myself  to  leave  it,  yet  my  mind 
hankered.  Wherefore  I  should  go  to  the  Steeple-house, 
and  look  on  it,  though  I  durst  not  ring.  .  .  .  But  quickly- 
after,  I  began  to  think,  How  if  one  of  the  Bells  should. 

*  I.  e.,  of  course,  in  ringing  the  chimes  of  the  village  church.  Venablcs 
has  skilfully  pointed  out,  in  various  passages  of  Bunyan's  writings,  how 
deep  a  train  of  associations  this  practice  later  involved  for  the  poet 


THE  CASE   OP  JOHN  BUNYAN.  43 

fall  ?  Then  I  chose  to  stand  under  a  main  Beam,  that  lay 
overthwart  the  Steeple,  from  side  to  side,  thinking  there  I 
might  stand  sure.  But  then  I  should  think  again,  Should 
the  Bell  fall  with  a  swing,  it  might  first  hit  the  wall,  and 
then  rebounding  upon  me,  might  kill  me  for  all  this  Beam. 
This  made  me  stand  in  the  Steeple-door  ;  and  now,  thought 
I.  I  am  safe  enough  ;  for,  if  a  Bell  should  then  fall  I  can 
slip  out  behind  these  thick  Walls,  and  so  be  preserved  not- 
withstanding. So  after  this  I  would  yet  go  to  see  them 
ring,  but  would  not  go  further  than  the  Steeple-door.  But 
then  it  came  into  my  Head,  How  if  the  Steeple  itself  should 
fall  ?  And  this  thought,  it  may  fall  for  aught  I  know, 
when  I  stood  and  looked  on,  did  continually  so  shake  my 
mind  that  I  durst  not  stand  at  the  Steeple-door  any  longer, 
but  was  forced  to  flee  for  fear  the  Steeple  should  fall  on  my 
head." 

The  parallel  between  Bunyan's  case  and  that  of  Dr. 
Cowles's  patient,  whose  experience  is  so  fully  described  in 
the  remarkable  paper  before  cited,  will  from  this  point  on- 
wards become  interesting  to  us.  It  is  noteworthy  that  Dr. 
Cowles's  patient,  after  some  history  of  childhood  fears, 
beginning  at  about  ten  years  of  age,  became,  for  a  time. 
"  well  of  these  morbid  experiences,"  *  but  afterwards,  in 
youth,  experienced  a  fresh  form  of  her  previous  disorder, 
and  met  this  relapse  at  first  in  the  form  of  "  feelings  of  hesi- 
tation in  performing  simple  acts,"  with  a  consequent  neces- 
sity of  repeating  many  such  acts  to  be  sure  that  they  were 
right  "  From  this  point,"  says  Dr.  Cowles  of  his  patient, 
"all  the  rest  follows  in  its  morbid  train."  The  fortunes  of 
Bunyan  were  to  be,  up  to  a  certain  point,  decidedly  similar. 
The  childhood  period,  with  its  warning  terrors,  had  given 
place  for  a  time  to  a  healthy  youth.  But  the  elementary 
conscientious  fears  which  now  appeared,  and  which  forced 


288. 


44  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

the  lately  reckless  Bunyan  to  outward  acts  of  unreasonable 
timidity,  were  soon  to  give  place,  as  in  Dr.  Cowles's  patient, 
to  far  more  insistent  and  systematized  impulses.  In  both  of 
these  cases  the  topics  about  which  the  insistent  impulses 
finally  systematized  were  matters  of  inner  conscientious 
scruples.  In  both  cases  the  general  outward  bearing  and 
conduct  long  remained  as  far  as  possible  normal,  except 
where  the  inner  sufferings  of  the  patient  must  perforce 
break  through  and  show  themselves.  In  Bunyan's  case  it 
is  interesting  that  these  first  signs  of  the  coming  storm  were 
motor  reflexes  of  a  timid  and  partly  of  a  morbidly  inhibi- 
tory sort,  produced  irresistibly  at  the  sound  of  those  bells 
which  he  had  so  much  loved  to  hear,  and  which,  as  Vena- 
bles  has  shown  by  quotations  from  his  later  works,  he 
never  afterwards  learned  to  forget. 

The  conversation  of  certain  poor  and  godly  people  about 
this  time  revealed  to  Bunyan  that,  with  all  his  legality,  he 
had  not  yet  learned  what  the  true  spiritual  life  is ;  and 
herewith  began  a  second  stage  of  his  conversion.  The  con- 
sequence was  much  continuous  meditation  upon  this  higher 
religious  life,  and  "a  softness  and  tenderness  of  Heart," 
whereby  his  mind  became  "  fixed  on  Eternity,"  and,  for  the 
time,  refused  "  to  be  taken  from  Heaven  to  Earth."  Theolog- 
ical controversy  with  companions  added  itself  to  the  fore- 
going to  intensify  Bunyan's  interest  in  the  secret  of  true 
faith.  He  now  constantly  read  the  Bible,  which,  however, 
to  him,  in  his  environment,  seemed  rather  a  collection  of 
texts  than  of  connected  treatises.  Henceforth  his  inner  life 
was  full  of  a  not  uncommon,  but  in  his  case  especially 
significant,  associative  process,  whereby  he  was  largely  at 
the  mercy  of  any  single  text  of  his  now  well-thumbed  Bible 
that  at  any  moment  might  chance  to  occur  to  him,  wholly 
separated,  of  course,  from  its  context  He  might  be  de- 
pressed. At  such  a  time  a  threatening  or  discouraging  text 
would  come  to  mind ;  this  or  that  Scripture  would  "  creep 


THE  CASE  OP  JOHN  BUNYAN.  45 

into  his  soul,"  and  wound  him,  or  chill  him  all  through. 
He  could  in  but  very  small  degree  resist  the  effect  of 
chance  association  by  recalling  the  original  relations  or  the 
meaning  of  this  text  as  determined  by  its  actual  setting  at 
the  place  where  it  occurs.  No,  this  "  word "  had  come  to 
him  alone ;  alone  he  must  interpret  it  and  apply  it  to  his 
case.  Did  its  serious  import  overwhelm  him  ?  Then  there 
was  no  way  but  to  hunt  at  random,  either  in  his  Bible,  or  in 
the  recesses  of  his  chance  associations,  for  some  other 
"  word "  to  set  over  against  the  first.  Then  would  follow 
very  possibly  long  processes  of  this  mere  balancing  of  texts. 
One  "  word  "  must  be  quoted  against  another,  one  series  of 
texts  must  be  neutralized  by  texts  whose  immediate  emo- 
tional effects  were  more  comforting.  Bunyan  also  developed, 
in  connection  with  such  tasks,  a  peculiarly  skilful  sort  of 
inner  dialectic  whereby  he  estimated  the  force  of  each  text. 
He  reasoned  very  subtly  with  these  his  own  shadows.  The 
decision  of  nearly  every  such  crisis  was  determined  in  the 
end,  however,  less  by  the  conscious  dialectic  itself  than  by 
the  chances  of  association.  At  last,  perhaps  after  days,  in 
the  later  stages  of  his  malady  after  months,  of  conflict,  some 
decisive  word  would  come  to  mind,  would  more  or  less  irre- 
sistibly "dart"  into  his  soul,  would  even  half  seem  to  be 
spoken  within  him  (a  few  times  with  the  force  of  a  pseudo- 
hallucination,  and  only  once  or  twice  with  almost  complete 
hallucinatory  vigor).  The  "word"  that  association  thus 
made  victorious  might  by  its  very  clearness,  or  by  the 
strength  of  its  emotional  setting,  banish  all  the  former 
"  words  "  from  mind ;  and  for  the  time  doubts  would  leave 
him.  Or  again  u  two  Scriptures  "  would  "  meet "  in  his  heart, 
and  one  of  them  would  triumph.  This  process  is  frequently 
exemplified  in  the  Grace  Abounding,  and  was  of  course 
largely  determined,  apart  from  the  abnormal  capriciousness 
of  his  associative  processes,  by  Bunyan's  religious  opinions 
and  companionships.  But  this  method  of  thinking  was  of 


4C  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

course  an  inconvenient  complication  in  view  of  his  now 
imminent  disorder. 

At  the  stage  of  his  pilgrimage  here  reached,  he  began  to 
read  Paul's  epistles  with  eagerness.  They  did  not  decrease 
his  dialectical  tendencies.  One  day,  when  alone  on  the 
road,  he  found  himself  wondering  gloomily,  as  he  had  been 
doing  for  some  time,  whether  he  really  had  saving  faith  or 
110.  Whereupon  the  "Tempter,"  who  of  course,  in  our 
author's  account,  has  to  bear  the  responsibility  for  many  of 
Banyan's  insistent  impulses,  and  for  a  large  part  of  his  as- 
sociative processes,  suggested,  as  he  had  several  times  done 
before,  that  there  was  no  way  for  Bunyan  to  prove  that  he 
had  faith  save  by  trying  to  work  some  miracle;  "which 
Miracle  at  that  time  was  this,  I  must  say  to  the  Puddles  that 
were  in  the  horse-pads,  Be  dry,  and  to  the  dry  places,  Be 
you  the  Paddles.  And  truly,  one  time  I  was  going  to  say 
so  indeed ;  but  just  as  I  was  about  to  speak,  this  thought 
came  into  my  mind,  But  go  under  yonder  Hedge  and  pray 
first  that  God  would  make  you  able.  But  when  I  had  con- 
cluded to  pray,  this  came  hot  upon  me,  That  if  I  prayed, 
and  came  again  and  tried  to  do  it,  and  yet  did  nothing  not- 
withstanding, then  be  sure  I  had  no  Faith,  but  was  a  Cast- 
away and  lost.  Nay,  thought  I,  if  it  be  so,  I  will  never  try 
yet,  but  will  stay  a  little  longer." 

In  this  account  it  is  of  course  the  hesitancy  and  the 
brooding,  questioning  attitude  that  is  symptomatic,  and  not 
the  logic  of  the  quaint  reasoning  process,  which,  in  view  of 
Bunyan's  presuppositions,  is  normal  enough  in  form.  To 
such  breedings  the  dreamer  added  about  this  time  one  very 
elaborate  symbolic  inner  vision  of  his  unhappy  state  as  re- 
lated to  the  state  of  the  godly  people  whose  faith  he  envied. 
The  vision,  which,  as  reported,  is  a  fine  instance  of  the  auto- 
matic visualizing  process  already  characterized,  need  detain 
us  here  no  further.  It  is  noteworthy  that  Bunyan  reports 
it  without  any  surprise,  as  an  incident  of  a  type  very  familiar 


THE  CASE  OF  JOHN  BUNYAN.  47 

in  his  inner  life.  The  striving  with  chance  Scripture  pas- 
sages continued,  and  now  often  drove  him  to  his  "  wit's 
end."  The  comforting  passages  were  occasionally  hit  upon, 
but  only  to  give  way  soon  to  doubts.  His  questions  as  to 
what  faith  is,  and  whether  he  was  of  the  elect,  had  already 
reached  the  limits  of  the  normal.  He  was  "  greatly  assaulted 
and  perplexed,  and  was  often/'  he  says,  "  when  I  have  been 
walking,  ready  to  sink  where  I  went  with  faintness  in  my 
mind."  This  is  one  of  the  few  hints  that  we  get  of  Bunyan's 
physical  state  at  this  time.  The  "  Tempter  "  was  meanwhile 
quite  capable  of  suggesting,  as  regards  Bunyan's  relation  to 
his  fellows  in  the  faith,  that  these  [viz.,  the  known  ''godly 
people"  aforesaid]  being  converted  already,  "they  were  all 
that  God  would  save  in  those  parts ;  and  that  I  came  too 
late,  for  these  had  got  the  Blessing  before  I  came."  This 
thought  was  insistent  enough  to  cause  Bun y an  great  dis- 
tress, and  even  anger  at  himself  for  having  lost  so  much 
time  in  the  past  After  really  desperate  and  lonely  strug- 
gles with  such  wavering  hopes,  gloomy  fears  as  to  his  salva- 
tion, and  insistent  questions  and  doubts  on  the  whole  sub- 
ject, he  at  length  forsook  his  solitude,  and  appealed  for  help 
to  the  "  godly  people "  themselves,  who  took  him  to  their 
pastor,  Mr.  Gifford. 

But  herewith  Gifford  only  made  Bunyan's  case  for  the 
time  worse  by  assuring  him  that  he  was  a  very  grievous 
sinner,  and  by  drawing  his  attention  away  from  the  uni- 
versal problems  about  faith  and  election  back  to  the  par- 
ticular facts  concerning  the  vanity  of  his  wicked  heart 
The  result  was  a  new  stage,  wherein  all  the  elements  pres- 
ent in  the  two  previous  stages  of  his  experience  were  mor- 
bidly combined,  and  the  associative  processes  so  inimical  to 
his  peace  were  rendered  more  automatic  and  systematic 
thuri  ever.  The  first  stage,  it  will  be  remembered,  had  been 
one  of  systematically  insistent  scrupulosity  as  to  the  details 
of  his  conduct,  with  elementary  inhibitions  and  fears.  The 


48  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL.' 

second  stage  had  been  one  of  large  and  more  "  tender  "  emo- 
tional states,  and  of  generalized  breedings  and  doubts  as  to 
faith  and  election,  accompanied  with  occasional  feelings  of 
general  physical  weakness  and  faintness.  But  now  this 
elaborate  process  of  morbid  training  came  to  combine  both 
generalized  and  specialized  elements.  The  first  effect  was 
that  instead  of  the  "  longing  after  God  "  which  had  charac- 
terized the  immediately  previous  state  of  mind,  Bunyan 
now  found  in  himself  a  perfect  chaos  of  "  Lusts  and  Cor- 
ruptions," "  wicked  thoughts  and  desires  which  I  did  not 
regard  before."  He  must  "  hanker  after  every  foolish  van- 
ity.1' His  heart  "  began  to  be  careless  both  of  my  Soul  and 
Heaven ;  it  would  now  continually  hang  back,  both  to  and 
in  every  duty ;  and  was  as  a  Clog  to  the  Leg  of  a  Bird  to 
hinder  her  from  flying.  Nay,  thought  I,  now  I  grow  worse 
and  worse ;  now  am  I  further  from  Conversion  than  ever  I 
was  before.  Wherefore  I  began  to  sink  greatly  in  my  Soul, 
and  began  to  entertain  such  discouragement  in  my  Heart 
as  laid  me  low  as  Hell.  If  now  I  should  have  burned  at  the 
stake,  I  could  not  believe  that  Christ  had  love  for  me :  alas. 
I  could  neither  hear  him,  nor  see  him,  nor  feel  him,  nor 
savour  any  of  his  things.  I  was  driven  as  with  a  Tempest ; 
my  Heart  would  be  unclean ;  the  Canaanites  would  dwell 
in  the  land."  To  this  fairly  classic  description  of  his  general 
state  Bunyan  now  adds  for  the  first  time  a  mention  of  the 
presence  of  insistent  "  unbelief,"  whereof  we  shall  soon  hear 
more.  Meanwhile,  however,  as  he  adds  in  a  most  charac- 
teristic fashion :  "  As  to  the  act  of  sinning,  I  was  never  more 
tender  than  now.  I  durst  not  take  a  pin  or  a  stick,  though  but 
so  big  as  a  straw,  for  my  conscience  now  was  sore,  and  would 
smart  at  every  touch ;  I  could  not  now  tell  how  to  speak  my 
words,  for  fear  I  should  misplace  them.  Oh,  how  gingerly 
did  I  then  go  in  all  I  did  or  said  !  I  found  myself  as  on  a 
miry  Bog  that  shook  if  I  did  but  stir ;  and  was  as  there  left 
both  of  God  and  Christ  and  the  Spirit,  and  all  good  things." 


THE  CASE  OF  JOHN  BUNYAN.  49 

When  a  man  has  once  got  so  far  into  the  u  Slough  of 
Despond  "  as  this,  there  is  indeed  no  way  but  to  go  on. 
Such  insistent  trains  of  morbid  association  cannot  be  mend- 
ed until  they  first  have  grown  worse.  The  process  of  sys- 
tematization  continued  in  this  case,  much  as  in  that  of  Dr. 
Cowles's  patient.*  There  were  for  Bunyan,  to  be  sure,  the 
occasional  remissions,  due  to  the  temporary  success  of  this 
or  that  Scripture  passage.  So,  in  one  instance,  the  effective 
suggestion  came  from  without,  through  a  sermon  on  the 
text,  Behold,  thou  art  fair,  my  Love ;  behold,  thou  art  fair 
— a  sermon  whose  pedantically  multipled  headings  Bunyan 
years  later  remembered  with  perfect  clearness.  As  he  was 
going  home  after  the  sermon  the  two  words,  My  Love,  came 
into  his  thoughts,  and  "  I  said  thus  in  my  heart,  What  shall 
I  get  by  thinking  on  these  two  words  f "  Whereupon  "  the 
words  began  thus  to  kindle  in  my  spirit,  Thou  art  my  Love, 
thou  art  my  Love,  twenty  times  together,  and  still  as  they 
ran  thus  in  my  mind  they  waxed  stronger  and  warmer,  and 
began  to  make  me  look  up.  But  being  as  yet  between  hope 
and  fear,  I  replied  in  my  heart,  But  is  it  true  f  At  which 
that  Sentence  fell  in  upon  me,  He  wist  not  that  it  was  true 
vh  ich  was  done  by  the  angel.  Then  I  began  to  give  place 
to  the  Word,  which  with  power  did  over  and  over  make 
this  joyful  sound  within  my  soul,  Thou  art  my  Love,  thou 
art  my  Love;  and  nothing  shall  separate  me  from  my 
Love ;  and  with  that  Romans  eight,  thirty-nine,  came  into 
my  mind.  Now  was  my  heart  full  of  comfort  and  hope  .  .  . 
yea,  I  was  now  so  taken  with  the  love  and  mercy  of  God 
that  I  could  not  tell  how  to  contain  till  I  got  Home."  But 
this  mood  of  course  proved  to  be  unstable,  and  Bunyan  soon 
"  lost  much  of  the  life  and  savour  of  it." 

"About  a  Week  or  a  Fortnight  after  this,"  continues  Bun- 
yan, "  I  was  much  followed  by  this  Scripture,  Simon,  Simon, 

•  Cowles,  he.  ctt.,  pp.  240-245. 


50  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

Satan  hath  desired  to  have  you.  And  sometimes  it  would 
sound  so  loud  within  me,  yea,  and  as  it  were  call  so  strongly 
after  me,  that  once  above  all  the  rest,  I  turned  my  head  over 
my  shoulder,  thinking  verily  that  some  Man  had,  behind 
me,  called  to  me ;  being  at  a  great  distance,  methought  he 
called  so  loud."  This  pseudo-hallucination  of  hearing, 
secondary,  be  it  noted,  to  the  now  frequent  and  insistent 
automatic  motor  process  of  internal  speech,  whereby  Bun- 
yan  obviously  found  such  texts  forced  upon  his  attention, 
concluded  this  special  episode,  and  this  particular  text,  as  he 
expressly  tells  us,  came  no  more.  Hallucinations  of  hear- 
ing form  no  part  of  this  case  in  any  but  this  secondary, 
transient,  and  "borderland"  form — a  fact,  of  course,  which 
has  to  be  clearly  borne  in  mind  in  estimating  the  phenom- 
ena. Later  reflection,  of  a  sort  perfectly  normal  upon  Bun- 
yan's  presuppositions,  convinced  him  afterwards  that  this 
visitation  was  a  heavenly  warning  that  a  "  cloud  and  a 
storm  was  coming  down "  upon  him  ;  but  at  the  time  he 
"  understood  it  not."  The  minuteness  of  the  account  here- 
abouts is  evidence,  both  of  the  depth  of  the  experiences,  and 
of  the  remarkable  intactness  of  Bunyan's  memory  amidst 
all  this  condition  of  irritable  nervous  instability  of  mood 
on  the  one  hand,  and  of  morbidly  persistent  brooding  on 
the  other. 

IV. 

But  now  for  the  culmination  of  the  disorder — a  culmina- 
tion which  appeared  in  three  successive  and  intensely  inter- 
esting periods  or  stages,  each  one  of  which  Bunyan  narrates 
to  us  with  extraordinary  skill  and  vigor. 

"  About  the  space  of  a  month  after,"  he  continues,  "  a 
very  great  storm  came  down  upon  me,  which  handled  me 
twenty  times  worse  than  all  I  had  met  with  before."  Of 
this  "  storm  "  the  primary  element,  as  we  should  now  say, 
was  a  melancholic  mood,  of  a  depth  and  origin  to  him  un- 
accountable. Former  moods  had  been  largely  secondary, 


THE  CASE  OF  JOHN  BUNYAN.  51 

as  would  appear,  to  his  doubts,  although  primary  states  of 
depression  had  also  played  their  part.  But  this  time  the  in- 
sistent impulses  appeared  as  obviously  quite  secondary  to 
the  mood.  The  latter  "  came  stealing  upon  me,  now  by 
one  piece,  then  by  another  ;  first  all  my  comfort  was  taken 
from  me,  then  darkness  seized  upon  me,  after  which  "  (the 
order  is  noteworthy)  "  whole  floods  of  blasphemies,  both 
against  God,  Christ,  and  the  Scriptures,  were  poured  upon 
my  spirit,  to  my  great  confusion  and  astoiiisliment.  These 
blasphemous  thoughts  were  such  as  also  stirred  up  questions 
in  me,  against  the  very  Being  of  God,  and  of  his  only  be- 
loved Son;  as,  whether  there  were,  in  truth,  a  God,  or 
Christ,  or  no  ?  And  whether  the  holy  Scriptures  were  not 
rather  a  fable,  and  cunning  story,  than  the  holy  and  pure 
Word  of  God  ?  The  tempter  would  also  much  assault  me 
with  this :  How  can  you  tell  but  that  the  Turks  had  as 
good  Scriptures  to  prove  their  Mahomet  the  Saviour  as 
we  have  to  prove  our  Jesus  is  ?  And  could  I  think  that  so 
many  ten  thousands  in  so  many  Countries  and  Kingdoms, 
should  be  without  the  knowledge  of  the  right  way  to 
Heaven  (if  indeed  there  were  a  heaven),  and  that  we  only 
who  live  in  a  corner  of  the  Earth  should  alone  be  blessed 
therewith.  Every  one  doth  think  his  own  religion 
rightest,  both  Jews  and  Moors  and  Pagans!  And  how  if 
all  our  Faith,  and  Christ,  and  Scriptures  should  be  but 
a  Think-so  too  9  " 

Bunyan  of  course  sought  to  argue  with  these  doubts,  but 
this  expert  in  the  dialectics  of  the  inner  life  now  very  nat- 
urally found  all  the  weapons  in  the  enemy's  hands.  He 
would  try  using  the  "  sentences  of  blessed  Paul  "  against  the 
"tempter."  But  alas!  it  was  Paul  who  had  taught  both 
Bunyan  and  the  "  tempter  "  how  to  argue  with  subtlety,  and 
now  the  reply  at  once  came,  in  interrogative  form  :  How  if 
Paul  too  were  a  cunning  deceiver,  who  had  taken  "pains 
and  travail  to  undo  and  destroy  his  fellows"?  Bunyan 's 


52  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

only  remaining  comfort  was  at  this  point  the  usual  one  of 
the  patients  afflicted  with  such  harassing  enemies.  He  was 
aware,  namely,  that  he  hated  his  own  doubts,  and  was  so, 
in  a  way,  better  than  they.  But,  as  he  expressively  words 
it:  "This  consideration  I  then  only  had  when  God  gave 
me  leave  to  swallow  my  Spittle ;  otherwise  the  noise  and 
strength  and  force  of  these  temptations  would  drown  and 
overflow  and,  as  it  were,  bury  all  such  thoughts."  Mean- 
while insistent  motor  impulses  of  a  still  more  specific  sort 
occurred.  Bunyan  frequently  felt  himself  tempted  "to 
curse  and  swear,  or  speak  some  grievous  thing  against  God." 
He  compares  his  state  to  that  of  a  child  whom  a  gipsy  is 
stealing  and  carrying  away,  "under  her  apron,"  "from 
friend  and  country."  "  Kick  sometimes  I  did,  and  also 
shriek  and  cry ;  but  yet  I  was  bound  in  the  wings  of  the 
temptation,  and  the  wind  would  carry  me  away."  Nor 
were  the  fears  of  hopeless  insanity,  so  common  in  such 
patients,  absent  from  Bunyan 's  mind,  so  far  as  his  knowl- 
edge permitted  him  to  formulate  them.  "  I  thought  also  of 
Saul,  and  of  the  evil  spirit  that  did  possess  him ;  and  did 
greatly  fear  that  my  condition  was  the  same  with  that  of 
his."  The  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost  was  of  course  sug- 
gested to  Bunyan's  mind  amongst  other  possible  crimes,  and 
it  seemed  at  once,  of  course,  as  if  he  "  could  not,  must  not, 
neither  should  be  quiet "  until  he  had  committed  that. 
"  Now,  no  sin  would  serve  but  that ;  if  it  were  to  be  com- 
mitted by  speaking  of  such  a  word,  then  I  have  been  as  if 
my  Mouth  would  have  spoken  that  word,  whether  I  would 
or  no ;  and  in  so  strong  a  measure  was  this  temptation  upon 
me,  that  often  I  have  been  ready  to  clasp  my  hand  under 
my  Chin,  to  hold  my  Mouth  from  opening ;  and  to  that  end 
also  I  have  had  thoughts  at  other  times,  to  leap  downward 
into  some  muck-hill  hole  or  other  to  keep  my  mouth  from 
speaking." 

But  to  follow  further  this  chaos  of  motor  processes  is, 


THE  CASE  OF  JOHN  BTJNYAN.  53 

for  our  purposes,  hardly  necessary.  A  system  there  indeed 
was  amidst  the  chaos,  but  this  system  is  now  manifest 
enough.  Suffice  it  that  the  whole  race  had  now  to  be  run. 
At  prayer  Bunyan  was  tempted  to  blaspheme,  or  the 
"  tempter  "  moved  him  with  the  thought,  Fall  down  and 
worship  me.  At  the  sacraments  of  the  church,  which,  al- 
though not  yet  a  member  of  the  church,  he  attended  as 
spectator,  in  hope  of  comfort,  he  was  also  "  distressed  with 
blasphemies."  There  were  still  no  true  hallucinations,  but 
"sometimes  I  have  thoughts  I  should  see  the  devil,  nay, 
thought  I  have  felt  him,  behind  me,  pluck  my  Clothes." 
As  to  mood,  Bunyan  was  now  usually  "  hard  of  heart"  "  If 
I  would  have  given  thousands  of  pounds  for  a  Tear,  I  could 
not  shed  one  ;  no,  nor  sometimes  scarce  desire  to  shed  one." 
Others  "  could  mourn  and  lament  their  sin."  But  he  was, 
as  he  saw,  alone  among  men,  in  this  hardness  of  heart,  as  in 
the  rest  of  his  troubles.  The  unclean  thoughts  and  blas- 
phemies aforesaid  were  likely,  as  is  obvious,  to  appear  as 
reflexes,  of  an  inhibitory  type  and  meaning  interestingly 
analogous  to  his  earlier  conscientious  scruples  themselves. 
For  these  blasphemies  were  excited  by  and  opposed  to  any 
pious  activity,  precisely  as  the  old  conscientious  fears  had 
been  excited  by  and  inhibitory  of  any  activity  which  his 
natural  heart  had  most  loved.  Hearing  or  reading  the 
Word  would  be  sure,  for  instance,  to  bring  to  pass  the  blas- 
phemous temptations.  The  "tempter"  was  a  sort  of  in- 
verted conscience,  busily  insisting  upon  whatever  was 
opposed  to  the  pious  intention.  Meanwhile  Bunyan  of 
course  complains  of  that  general  confusion  of  head  of 
which  all  such  sufferers  are  likely  to  speak.  When  he  was 
reading,  "sometimes  my  mind  would  be  so  strangely 
snatched  away  and  possessed  with  other  things,  that  I  have 
neither  known,  nor  regarded,  nor  remembered  so  much  as 
that  sentence  that  but  now  I  have  read."  This  "  distrac- 
tion "  was  often  at  prayer-time  associated  with  insistent 


54:  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

inner  visual  images,  as  of  a  "  Bull,  a  Besom,  or  the  like,"  to 
which  Bunyan  was  tempted  to  pray. 

Bunyan  attributes  to  this  condition  an  endurance  of 
about  a  year.  Detailed  and  obviously  trustworthy  as  his 
psychological  memory  is,  his  chronology  seems  to  suffer, 
very  naturally,  with  a  tendency  to  lengthen  in  memory 
the  successive  stages  of  his  affliction.  One  can  hardly  find 
room,  in  the  known  period  occupied  by  the  entire  experi- 
ence, for  such  lengthy  separate  stages  as  the  writer  assumes. 
The  present,  or  first  culminating  period  of  the  malady, 
finally  passed  off  by  a  gradual  decline  of  the  insistent 
symptoms — a  decline  assisted,  as  would  appear,  by  a  con- 
troversial interest  which  Bunyan  was  just  then  led  to  take 
in  the  "  errors  of  the  Quakers,"  to  whose  condemnation  he 
devotes  a  paragraph  of  his  text,  hereabouts,  in  his  Autobi- 
ography. The  objective  turn  which  such  controversial 
thoughts  gave  his  mind  was  used,  as  he  himself  feels,  by 
the  Lord,  to  "  confirm  "  him. 

One  would  suppose  that  the  foregoing  story,  written 
with  the  most  moving  pathos  by  Bunyan,  ought  of  itself 
to  be  a  sufficiently  obvious  confession,  even  to  readers  of 
comparatively  little  psychological  knowledge.  The  long- 
trained  habits  of  verbal  and  emotional  association  which 
are  exemplified  in  these  repeated  experiences  with  the  re- 
membered passages  of  Scripture,  the  systematized  attitudes 
of  conscientious  fear  and  inhibition  which  date  back  to  the 
beginning  of  our  author's  conversion,  the  obvious  essential 
identity  between  all  these  mental  habits,  and  those  which 
Bunyan's  "  tempter,"  his  inverted  conscience — equally  fear- 
compelling,  equally  inhibitory  of  his  present  ardent  desires 
— represented,  whenever  this  "tempter"  disturbed  him  at 
prayer,  even  as  his  conscience  had  in  former  days  learned 
to  disturb  him  at  bell-ringing — all  these  phenomena  give  us 
a  most  instructive  object-lesson  concerning  the  familiar 
processes  by  which  the  human  brain,  whether  in  health  or 


THE  CASE  OP  JOHN  BUNYAN.  55 

in  disorder,  gets  moulded.  The  emotional  instability  that 
lies  at  the  basis  of  this  particular  morbid  process — an  insta- 
bility without  which,  of  course,  just  these  habits  could  never 
have  become  such  formidable  enemies — is  perfectly  clear 
before  us.  Of  the  precise  physical  basis  of  this  instability 
we  can  indeed  only  form  conjectures ;  but  we  know  that 
this  was  an  extremely  sensitive  brain,  and  that  the  child- 
hood dreams  and  terrors  had  been  of  a  type  such  as  to  fur- 
nish obvious  warnings  that  this  mind  needed  especial  care. 
We  know  too  that  such  care  was  in  so  far  lacking,  as  this 
still  very  young  man  had  now  to  suffer  the  anxieties  of  pro- 
viding for  his  family  at  a  moment  when  his  troubles  about 
his  soul  were  intense,  and  when  his  poverty  was  great. 
Meanwhile,  one  aspect  of  the  symptoms,  which  we  have 
already  noticed,  is  as  obvious  as  it  has  been,  in  the  past, 
neglected  by  Bunyan's  readers.  This  man,  a  born  genius 
as  to  his  whole  range  of  language- functions,  had  been  from 
the  start  a  ready  speaker,  had  developed  in  boyhood  an 
abounding  wealth  of  skilfully  bad  language,  and  had  then, 
in  terror-stricken  repentance,  suddenly  devoted  himself  for 
iiumy  months  to  a  merciless  inhibition  of  every  doubtful 
word.  We  observe  now  that  insistent  motor  speech-func- 
tions were  the  most  marked  and  distressing  of  his  mental 
enemies,  and  that  both  the  tempter,  and  that  comforter 
whose  strangely  suggested  Scripture  passages  occasionally 
consoled  Bunyan's  heart,  tended  to  speak,  "as  it  were," 
within  the  suffering  soul.  When  one  considers,  still  fur- 
ther, the  careful  way  in  which,  by  his  own  description, 
Bunyan  excludes  from  his  case  all  hallucinatory  elements 
except  the  few  pseudo-hallucinations,  how  can  one  doubt 
the  type  of  patient  with  whom  one  has  to  deal  ?  Memory, 
as  one  sees,  is  remarkably  intact  Any  tendency  to  patho- 
logical delusion  is  obviously  lacking ;  for  that  Bunyan  is 
beset  by  the  "  tempter,"  is  for  him  a  mere  statement  of  the 
obvious  facts  in  the  light  of  his  accepted  faith,  and  is,  from 


56  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

his  point  of  view,  a  strictly  normal  and  inevitable  hypoth- 
esis, which  he  never  in  any  morbid  fashion  misuses.  For 
the  rest,  he  retains  throughout  as  clearly  critical  an  attitude 
towards  his  case  as  the  situation  in  anywise  permits  ;  other- 
wise we  should  never  have  come  to  get  this  beautiful  con- 
fession. 

And  yet,  as  said,  the  biographers  have  repeatedly  missed 
nearly  all  these  psychological  aspects  of  the  case,  and  that, 
too,  whatever  their  theory  of  the  poet's  experiences.  Some, 
as  pointed  out,  have  endeavored  to  conceive  all  this  as  mere- 
ly the  deep  religious  experience  of  an  untutored  genius.  Re- 
ligious experience  it  indeed  was ;  nor  does  its  deep  human 
interest  suffer  from  our  recognition  of  its  pathological  char- 
acter. Genius  there  also,  indeed,  is,  in  every  word  of  the 
written  story.  But  the  specific  sequence  of  the  symptoms 
thus  recorded,  and  the  striking  parallel  with  such  modern 
cases  as  that  of  Dr.  Cowles's  patient  (who  was  surely  no 
ganius,  and  whose  morbid  conscience  busied  itself  with  far 
more  earthly  matters  than  the  religious  issues  central  in 
Bunyan's  mind) — these  things  forbid  us  to  doubt  that  the 
phenomena  are  characteristic  of  a  pretty  typical  morbid 
process,  which  has  certainly  gone  on  in  very  many  less  ex- 
alted brains  than  was  that  of  Bunyan.  Other  biographers 
have  spoken,  as  Macaulay  did,  of  "  fearful  disorder,"  but 
have  had  no  sense  of  the  clear  difference  between  an  hallu- 
cinatory delirium,  which  could  only  develop  either  in  a  very 
deeply  intoxicated  or  exhausted,  or  else  in  a  hopelessly 
wrecked  brain,  and  a  disorder  such  as  this  of  Bunyan's, 
which  could  get  thus  dramatically  systematized  only  in  a 
sensitive  but  nevertheless  extremely  tough  and  highly  or- 
ganized brain,  whose  general  functions  were  still  largely 
intact.  So  sympathetic  an  observer  as  Froude,  on  the 
other  hand,  almost  wholly  ignoring  the  pathological  aspect 
of  the  case,  can  actually  suppose  that  Bunyan's  "  doubts 
and  misgivings  "  were  "  suggested  by  a  desire  for  truth "  ; 


THE  CASE  OF  JOHN  BUNYAN.  57 

because,  forsooth,  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  nineteenth- 
century  thinker :  "  No  honest  soul  can  look  out  upon  the 
world,  and  see  it  as  it  really  is,  without  the  question  rising 
in  him  whether  there  be  any  God  that  governs  it  all." 
Froude  imagines,  therefore,  that  Bunyan  later  went  no 
further  in  doubt  largely  because  "critical  investigation 
had  not  yet  analyzed  the  historical  construction  of  the 
sacred  books."  But  surely  thus  to  argue  is  wholly  to  miss 
what  it  is  that  makes  a  given  sort  of  questioning,  or  of 
other  impulse,  normal  or  morbid,  for  a  given  man,  and 
under  given  circumstances.  And  here  is  perhaps  the  place 
to  define  more  precisely  this  very  matter  in  our  own  way. 

Morbidly  insistent  impulses,  of  whatever  sort,  are,  oddly 
enough,  never  morbid  merely  because  they  insist  For  all 
our  most  normal  impulses  are,  or  may  become,  insistent 
One  has  a  constantly  insistent  impulse  to  breathe,  a  fre- 
quently insistent  impulse  to  eat;  and  one's  life  depends 
upon  just  such  insistences.  Insistent  desires  keep  us  in 
love  with  our  work,  take  us  daily  about  our  duties,  guide 
our  steps  back  to  our  homes,  seat  us  in  our  chairs  to  rest 
are  with  us,  in  their  due  order,  from  morning  to  night, 
whether  we  bathe,  dress,  walk,  speak,  write,  or  go  to  bed. 
To  run  counter  to  such  normally  insistent  impulses  pains, 
and  may  in  extreme  cases  very  greatly  distress,  or  even  in 
the  end  quite  demoralize  us.  Insistence  of  will-functions 
is,  then,  so  far,  a  sign  of  health,  and  means  only  the  kindly 
might  of  sound  habit  An  "imperative  impulse"  of  the 
morbid  sort  is  therefore,  in  the  first  place,  one  that,  under 
the  circumstances,  opposes  instead  of  helping  our  normal 
process  of  "  adjustment  to  our  environment"  But  herewith 
we  have  still  only  defined,  so  far,  that  element  of  the  mor- 
bid impulse  which  the  latter  shares  in  common  with  all  de- 
fective mental  processes.  The  peculiar  differentia,  however, 
of  all  such  forms  of  morbidly  insistent  thoughts,  fears,  temp- 
tations, etc.,  as  are  the  ones  now  in  question,  is  that  their 


58  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

tendency  to  bring  one  out  of  "  harmony  with  his  environ- 
ment "  is  subjectively  expressed,  for  the  sufferer  himself,  in 
the  form  of  a  sense  that  the  fear,  thought,  or  other  impulse  in 
question  is  opposed  to  his  fitting  relation  to  his  environment 
as  he  himself  conceives  that  relation.  The  hallucination 
or  the  delusion  gives  one  a  pathologically  falsified  environ- 
ment, and  then  one's  adjustment  objectively  fails,  because 
one  knows  not  rightly  the  truth  to  which  one  ought  to  be 
adjusted.  Confusedness,  or  mere  incoherence  of  ideas  and 
impulses,  or  other  such  general  alteration  of  consciousness, 
equally  means  failure,  but  here  also  without  any  completer 
subjective  sense  of  what  one's  failure  objectively  involves. 
But  the»present  sort  of  sufferer  from  morbidly  insistent  im- 
pulses, whether  or  no  he  conceives  his  environment  rightly, 
still  knows  how  he  conceives  it,  and  has  his  general  plans  of 
thought  and  will ;  but  he  himself,  meanwhile,  finds,  within 
himself,  "in  his  members,"  "another  law  warring  against 
the  law  "  which  he  has  accepted  as  his  own.  Without  pretty 
definite  plans,  then,  there  can  be  no  such  morbidly  insistent 
impulses  as  are  these  of  Bunyan's  tale.  Failure  or  strong 
tendency  to  failure,  in  the  adjustment,  as  conceived  and 
planned  by  the  sufferer  himself — such  failure  being  due  to 
this  inner  conflict — this  it  is  that  makes  us  here  speak  of 
morbidly  insistent  impulses. 

But  not  even  thus  do  we  define  all  that  it  is  necessary 
to  bear  in  mind  in  judging  such  cases.  Impulses,  feelings, 
thoughts,  more  or  less  inimical  to  our  deliberate  plans,  are 
constantly,  if  but  faintly,  suggested  to  us,  by  our  normal 
overwealth  of  perceptions  and  of  associations.  Without 
such  overwealth  of  offered  perceptions  and  associations,  we 
should  not  have  sufficient  material  for  mental  selection ;  yet 
such  overwealth  is  necessarily  full  of  solicitations,  tempting 
us,  with  greater  or  less  clearness,  to  abandon  or  to  interrupt 
our  chosen  plans  of  action.  Nor  is  there  any  fixed  limit  to 
the  range  of  those  "imaginations  as  one  would,"  that,  as 


THE  CASE  OP  JOHN  BUNYAN.  59 

Hobbes  already  pointed  out,  may  at  any  moment  be  initiated 
in  a  man's  inner  life  by  chance  experience  and  association. 
Therefore,  mere  opposition  between  our  chance  impulses 
and  our  plans  is  a  perfectly  normal  experience. 

Normal  impulses  then  are  insistent  And  normal  trains 
of  impulse,  or  plans  of  conduct,  are  constantly  besieged  by 
the  faint  but  more  or  less  inimical  distractions  of  normal 
experience.  When,  then,  is  any  single  impulse,  as  such, 
abnormal  ?  When  it  insists  ?  No,  for  breathing  is  an  insist- 
ent impulse.  When  it  opposes  the  current  trains  of  cohe- 
rent thought  or  volition  ?  No,  for  every  momentary  inner 
or  outer  distraction  tends  to  do  that ;  and  there  is  hardly 
any  known  impulse  or  thought  or  feeling  of  which  a  nor- 
mal man  may  not  at  almost  any  moment  be  reminded, 
through  the  chances  of  perception  and  of  association.  What 
then  is  the  subjective  test  of  the  abnormal  in  impulse  ?  One 
can  only  find  it  in  this :  Association  chances  to  suggest  any 
impulse  inimical  to  one's  actually  chosen  plans  for  "  adjust- 
ment to  the  environment"  So  far  there  is  no  essential  de- 
fect This  happens  to  anybody.  But  normally  the  cohe- 
rence of  one's  series  of  healthily  insistent  or  of  voluntary 
impulses  is  so  great,  or  the  strength  of  the  intruder  soon  be- 
comes, under  the  influence  of  the  opposed  ruling  interests, 
so  faint,  that  this  intruder  is  erelong  sent  below  the  level 
of  consciousness,  or  harmlessly  "segmented/'  and  that  with 
an  ease  and  a  speed  proportioned  to  the  incongruity  and  to 
the  felt  inconvenience  of  this  enemy  itself.  But  in  the 
abnormal  cases,  things  go  otherwise.  Perhaps  the  intruding 
impulse  is  not  a  chance  one,  but  is  itself  part  of  a  previously 
established  system  of  inhibitory  habits.  Or  perhaps  it  is 
supported  by  numerous  now  partly  or  wholly  unconscious 
motives,  say  by  masses  of  internal  bodily  sensations  (as  in 
case  of  pathological  fears,  or  of  certain  physical  temptations 
of  abnormal  vigor).  In  all  such  cases  it  may  prove  too 
strong  to  be  controlled.  Or  again,  the  general  condition  of 


CO  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

the  sufferer  is  one  of  irritable  weakness.  The  sustained 
coherence  of  normal  functions  is  then  already  impaired  by 
nervous  exhaustion ;  the  main  trains  of  association  hang 
weakly  together;  their  general  power  of  resistance,  so  to 
speak,  is  lowered.  The  intruding  impulse,  on  the  contrary, 
is  then  the  mental  aspect  of  a  suggested  nervous  excitement 
that,  beginning  at  one  point,  quickly  spreads  to  others,  and 
for  the  time  takes  possession  of  the  functions  of  this  un- 
stable brain.  And  now,  in  any  of  these  cases,  we  have  a 
failure  to  resist  the  intruder,  a  failure  which  the  sufferer 
himself  bittei'ly  feels.  Objectively,  the  failing  adjustment 
appears  as  hesitation,  or  as  useless  repetition  of  acts,  or  as 
unaccountable  impulsive  ''  queerness  "  of  conduct,  or  even 
as  helpless  inactivity,  with  various  quasi-melancholic  symp- 
toms— silence,  hiding,  self-roproach,  lamentation.  Within, 
the  sufferer,  who,  to  suffer  decidedly  from  this  sort  of  mal- 
ady, must  be  a  person  of  highly  organized  plans  and  of  self- 
observant  intelligence,  feels  a  prodigious  struggle  going 
on.  All  seems  to  him  activity,  warfare,  self -division,  tu- 
mult 

In  judging  of  such  a  case,  one  must  therefore  carefully 
avoid  being  deceived  either  by  the  imperativeness  or  by  the 
quaintness  of  the  particular  impulses  involved.  All  de- 
pends upon  their  relations  in  a  man's  mental  life.  The  in- 
tense interests  of  the  inventor,  of  the  man  of  science,  of  the 
rapt  public  speaker,  are  not  necessarily  at  all  analogous  to 
the  "obsessions"  of  the  sufferer  from  insistent  impulses, 
although  the  former  are,  like  breathing,  imperative.  Nor 
are  the  merrily  absurd  impulses  of  a  gay  party  of  young 
people  at  a  picnic  abnormal,  merely  because  they  are  for  the 
time  incoherent,  and  are  thus  opposed  to  serious  thought 
and  conduct.  No,  it  is  the  union  of  a  tendency  toward  in- 
coherence in  feeling  and  conduct,  with  an  imperative  resist- 
ance to  the  actual  and  conscious  plans,  whereby  the  sufferer 
deliberately  intends  to  be  in  some  chosen  fashion  coherent — 


THE  CASE  OF  JOHN  BUNYAN.  61 

it  is  this  union  of  incongruity  with  insistence  that  con- 
stitutes the  subjective  note  of  the  morbidly  insistent  im- 
pulse. 

These  are  commonplace  considerations.  I  should  not 
introduce  them  here  were  not  the  literature  of  this  whole 
topic  so  often  affected  by  confusions  of  conception.  In  the 
light  of  such  obvious  considerations,  Froude's  refusal  to  see 
the  abnormity  of  Bunyan's  insistent  questions  or  "  blasphe- 
mies "  as  to  the  being  of  God,  and  the  like,  becomes  suffi- 
ciently insignificant  as  affecting  our  present  judgment  Any 
man  may  by  chance,  in  his  mind,  come  momentarily  to  ques- 
tion anything.  That  is  so  far  a  matter  of  passing  associ- 
ation, and  involves  nothing  suspicious.  A  modern  or,  for 
that  matter,  an  ancient  thinker  may  moreover  persistently 
question  God's  existence.  If  the  thinker  is  a  philosopher, 
or  other  theoretical  inquirer,  such  doubts  may  form  part  of 
his  general  plans,  and  may  so  be  as  healthy  in  character  as 
any  other  forms  of  intellectual  considerateness.  But  if  a 
man's  whole  inner  life,  in  so  far  as  it  is  coherent,  is  built 
upon  a  system  of  plans  and  of  faiths  which  involve  as  part 
of  themselves  the  steadfast  principle  that  to  doubt  God's  ex- 
istence is  horrible  blasphemy,  and  if,  nevertheless,  after  a 
fearful  fit  of  darkness,  such  a  man  finds,  amidst  "whole 
floods  "  of  other  "  blasphemies,'*  doubts  about  God  not  only 
suddenly  forced  upon  him,  but  persistent  despite  his  horror 
and  his  struggles,  then  it  is  vain  for  a  trained  sceptic  of  an- 
other age  to  pretend  an  enlightened  sympathy,  and  to  say  to 
this  agonized  nervous  patient :  "  Doubt  ?  Why,  I  have 
doubted  God's  existence  too."  The  ducklings  can  safely 
swim,  but  that  does  not  make  their  conduct  more  congruous 
with  the  plans  and  the  feelings  of  the  hen.  The  profes- 
sional doubters  may  normally  doubt.  But  that  does  not 
make  doubt  less  a  malady  in  those  who  suffer  from  it,  and 
strive,  and  cry  out,  but  cannot  get  free. 

This  observation,  that  the  symptomatic  value  of  these 


62  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

insistent  impulses  lies  solely  in  the  relation  between  the 
impulses  themselves  and  the  organized  mental  life,  the 
plans,  insight,  and  chosen  habits  of  the  patient,  reminds  us 
also  in  this  case  that  Bunyan's  experiences  clearly  indicate 
the  essential  psychological  equivalence  of  several  of  the  va- 
rious sorts  of  manias  and  phobias  which  some  authors,  im- 
agining that  the  content  rather  than  the  relations  of  the  im- 
pulses concerned  is  important,  have  so  needlessly  chosen  to 
distinguish.  Bunyan  was  tempted  to  doubt,  fear,  question, 
blaspheme,  curse,  swear,  pray  to  the  devil,  or  to  do  whatever 
else  conscientious  inhibition  and  irritably  weak  speech-func- 
tions had  prepared  him  to  find  peculiarly  fascinating  and 
horrible.  There  was  no  importance  in  the  mere  variety  of 
the  wicked  ideas  that  the  one  "  tempter "  suggested.  The 
evil  lay  in  the  systematized  character  of  the  morbid  habits 
involved,  and  in  the  exhausting  multitude  of  the  tempter's 

assaults. 

v 

The  malady  was  now,  after  the  passage  of  this  acute  stage, 
all  the  more  certainly  in  possession  of  the  man.  The  tempo- 
rary remission  was  sure  to  prove  deceitful.  In  Dr.  Cowles's 
patient,  after  once  the  morbid  habits  had  become  system- 
atized, to  a  degree  similar  to  the  one  now  reached  in  Bun- 
yan's case,  there  was  apparently  no  way  out  of  the  gloomy 
labyrinth.  Whatever  devices  were  tried  led,  so  long  as 
the  patient  was  under  Dr.  Cowles's  observation,  to  renewed 
struggles  with  conscientious  scruples  and  with  ingeniously 
subtle  inner  temptations,  and  the  sufferer,  whatever  her  tem- 
porary stages  of  relief,  was  doomed  to  walk  round  and  round 
the  charmed  circle  of  doubt,  of  temptation,  of  elaborate  self- 
invented  exorcising  devices,  of  failure,  of  self-reproach,  and 
of  despair.  It  was  to  be  Bunyan's  good  fortune  to  escape  in 
the  end  from  his  tempter.  How  he  was  thus  to  escape,  the 
next  and  most  agonizing  of  his  acute  stages  was  to  deter- 
mine. The  sufferer  from  such  morbid  systems  is  at  best,  as 


THE  CASE  OP  JOHN  BUNYAN.  C3 

all  the  evidence  shows,  in  a  very  serious  position.  That 
very  strength  of  certain  of  his  highest  brain-functions 
which  is  one  condition  of  the  development  of  his  weakness 
as  to  other  functions,  makes  all  the  harder  the  task  of  teach- 
ing him  wholly  new  mental  habits.  Yet  without  such 
wholly  new  habits  he  can  never  escape.  Hence  the  evil  prog- 
nosis which  most  observers  now  unite  in  attributing  to  this 
type  of  disorder,  viz.,  to  the  chronic  malady  of  insistent  im- 
pulses with  intercurrent  acute  stages.  But  there  is  one 
rather  desperate  chance  which  most  writers  on  the  subject 
have,  as  I  think,  generally  neglected.  Suppose  there  appears, 
in  the  life  of  the  chronically  affected  patient,  a  new  insist- 
ent impulse,  such  that  yielding  to  this  particular  impulse 
brings  the  patient  into  some  wholly  new  relation  to  his  en- 
vironment. Suppose,  thereupon,  that  a  novel  and  profoundly 
different  life,  even  if  this  be  a  very  painful  life,  is  forced 
upon  him  in  consequence  of  his  yielding.  The  result  may 
be  a  condition  of  things  in  which,  diseased  though  he  still 
is,  the  old  cares  and  temptations  are  entirely  set  aside  by  the 
fresh  experiences  given  through  the  new  environment  If 
the  patient  has  now  strength  enough  to  bear  the  pangs  and 
the  fresh  and  strongly  contrasted  nervous  distresses  of  this 
changed  life,  he  may  actually  have  time  to  reform  his  men- 
tal habits  before  the  old  "  tempter "  is  able,  for  his  part,  to 
organize  his  own  inimical  nervous  tendencies  upon  the  new 
battle-field.  The  substituted  pangs  themselves  may  then 
pass  before  the  old  are  renewed.  Then  indeed,  some  day, 
tin-  old  enemy  will  come  back,  but  the  patient  will  have  be- 
come, meanwhile,  another  man,  and  the  whole  system  of 
his  formerly  insistent  opponents  will  have  been  broken  up. 
He  will  thus  find  himself  thrown  back,  in  some  sense,  to  the 
earlier  stages  of  his  own  case;  he  will  once  more  have  only 
elementary  doubts  and  fears  to  oppose.  But  these  his  expe- 
rience will  have  taught  him  to  circumvent ;  and  so,  at  any 
rate  with  a  certain  degree  of  defect,  he  may  have  become 
G 


04  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

cured.  The  elements  will  survive,  but  will  110  longer  sys- 
tematize. 

This  possible  good  fortune,  to  be  won,  if  at  all,  by  passing 
through  the  fiercest  fire  of  painful  impulse,  Dr.  Cowles's 
patient  tried  in  vain  to  find,  when  she  experimented  at  pre- 
tending to  poison  herself,  or,  later,  deliberately  wounded 
herself  with  a  pistol,  not  hoping  to  commit  suicide,  but  only 
seeking  to  expiate  her  faults,  and  to  get  peace  from  her 
tempter,  through  novel  pangs.  Bunyan,  without  dreaming 
of  such  relief,  actually  won  it  through  what  seemed,  at  the 
time,  the  most  hopeless  of  all  the  woes  that  had  yet  beset 
him. 

"  For  after  the  Lord  had,  in  this  manner,  thus  graciously 
delivered  me  from  this  great  and  sore  Temptation  .  .  .  the 
Tempter  came  upon  me  again,  and  that  with  a  more  grievous 
and  dreadful  Temptation  than  before.  And  that  was,  To  sell 
and  part  u-ith  this  most  blessed  Christ,  to  exchange  him 
for  the  things  of  this  life,  for  anything." 

The  new  temptation  had  its  own  typical  mental  context, 
different  from  that  of  the  previous  stage.  This  was  now  no 
single  member  of  a  "  flood  of  blasphemies."  It  stood  nearly 
alone,  as  an  equivalent  for  all  the  rest  of  the  earlier  tempta- 
tions. Still,  however,  the  impulse  to  sell  Christ  was  merely 
an  imperative  motor  speech-function.  No  other  word  seems 
ever  to  have  substituted  itself  for  the  word  sell ;  and  the 
only  further  act  involved  in  yielding  to  the  temptation  was 
a  purely  formal  inner  assent  to  the  "  selling."  The  proposed 
transaction  involved,  as  a  matter  of  course,  no  actually  con- 
ceived exchange  whatever.  Nevertheless,  in  a  most  inter- 
esting fashion,  the  imperative  impulse  now  appeared  as  a 
reflex,  which  tended,  in  consciousness,  to  enter  into  a  sort  of 
"  agglutinative  "  combination  (to  use  one  of  Wundt's  well- 
known  adopted  phrases),  with  any  object  of  passing  percep- 
tive interest ;  so  that  the  special  form  of  the  experience  was 
that  the  tempter  moved  Bunyan  to  sell  Christ  for  this  or 


THE  CASE  OP  JOHN  BUXYAX.  65 

for  ttiat,  whatever  the  insignificant  thing  might  be  that 
Bunyan  was  at  the  moment  attending  to,  or  handling,  or 
dealing  with  in  any  active  way.  The  painfulness,  the  asso- 
ciated fear,  and  the  violence  of  the  thought,  were  all  of  the 
most  intense  sort ;  and  this  reflex  character  made  the  temp- 
tation infect  Bunyan 's  whole  life  most  horribly  ;  "  for  it  did 
always,  in  almost  whatever  I  thought,  intermix  itself  there- 
with, in  such  sort  that  I  could  neither  eat  my  food,  stoop 
for  a  pin,  chop  a  stick,  or  cast  mine  eye  to  look  on  this  or 
that,  but  still  the  temptation  would  come,  Sell  Christ  for 
this,  or  sell  Christ  for  that ;  sell  him,  sell  him." 

The  struggle  this  time  very  soon  led  Bunyan  to  that 
grave  stage  where  the  sufferer  from  insistent  impulses  re- 
sorts to  apparently  senseless  motor  acts  that  possess  for  him 
an  exorcising  significance.  "  By  the  very  force  of  my  mind, 
in  laboring  to  gainsay  and  resist  this  wickedness,  my  very 
body  also  would  be  put  into  action  or  motion  by  way  of 
pushing  or  thrusting  with  my  hands  or  elbows,  still  answer- 
ing as  fast  as  the  destroyer  said,  Sell  him  ;  I  will  not,  I  will 
not  .  .  .  no,  not  for  thousands,  thousands,  thousands  of 
worlds."  This  kind  of  elaboration  rapidly  grew  to  its  own 
hopelessly  extravagant  extremes.  But  in  vain.  A  few 
added  doubts,  of  the  old  inhibitory  type,  meanwhile  ap- 
peared in  the  background,  but  the  tempter  had  now,  so  to 
speak,  learned  his  game,  and  had  no  need  to  waste  his  forces 
upon  general  devices  of  inhibition.  This  one  suggestion  was 
enough.  The  loathsome  triviality  of  the  motor  impulse 
itself,  in  its  pettiness,  and  the  vast  dignity  of  the  eternal 
issues  imperilled,  as  Bunyan  felt,  by  its  presence,  combined 
to  give  the  situation  all  the  dreadful  and  inhibitory  features 
that  had  earlier  been  spread  over  so  wide  a  mental  range  of 
evil  interests. 

"  But  to  be  brief,  one  morning,  as  I  did  lie  in  my  bed,  I 
was,  "as  at  other  times,  most  fiercely  assaulted  with  this 
temptation,  .  .  .  the  wicked  suggestion  still  running  in  my 


G6  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

mind,  Sell  him,  sell  him,  sell  him,  sell  him,  as  fast  as  a  man 
could  speak.  Against  which  also,  in  my  mind,  as  at  other 
times,  I  answered,  .ZVb,  no,  not  for  thousands,  thousands, 
thousands,  at  least  twenty  times  together.  But  at  last,  after 
much  striving,  even  until  I  was  almost  out  of  breath,  I  felt 
this  thought  pass  through  my  heart,  Let  him  go,  if  he  will ! 
and  I  thought  also  that  I  felt  my  heart  freely  consent  there- 
to. Oh  the  diligence  of  Satan !  Oh  the  desperateness  of 
man's  heart ! 

"  Now  was  the  battle  won,  and  down  fell  I,  as  a  Bird  that 
is  shot  from  the  top  of  a  tree,  with  great  guilt,  and  fearful 
despair.  Thus  getting  out  of  my  Bed,  I  went  moping  into 
the  field  ;  but  God  knows,  with  as  heavy  a  heart  as  mortal 
man,  I  think,  could  bear ;  where,  for  the  space  of  two  hours, 
I  was  like  a  man  bereft  of  life,  and  as  now  past  all  recovery, 
and  bound  over  to  eternal  punishment." 

VI. 

The  nervous  crisis  thus  passed  served  to  introduce  a  con- 
dition of  extremely  lengthy,  quasi-melancholic,  but  to  Bun- 
yan's  consciousness  wholly  secondary,  depression.  The 
hopeless  sin  was  committed.  Like  Esau  he  had  sold  his 
birthright.  There  was  now  "no  place  for  repentance." 
This,  the  third  stage  of  the  culmination  of  the  malady,  was 
marked  by  an  almost  entire  quiescence  of  the  insistently 
sinful  impulses ;  for  what  had  the  victorious  tempter  now 
left  to  do  ?  There  were  no  more  minor  hesitancies,  no 
loathsome  motor  irritations.  One  overwhelming  idea  and 
grief  inhibited  all  these  inhibitory  symptoms.  The  insistent 
associative  processes  with  the  Scripture  passages  became, 
however,  for  a  good  while,  all  the  more  marked,  automatic, 
and  commanding.  Thus  the  whole  mental  situation  was 
profoundly  altered.  The  secondary  melancholic  depression 
expressed  itself  occasionally  in  praecordial  anxiety.  "  I  have 
felt  also  such  a  clogging  and  heat  at  my  stomach,  by  reason 


THE  CASE  OF  JOHN  BUNYAN.  67 

of  this  my  terror,  that  I  was,  especially  at  some  times,  as  if 
my  breast  bone  would  have  split  asunder."  But  Bunyan 
even  now  never  long  lost  his  dialectic  skill ;  and  hopeless 
as  seemed  his  case,  he  from  the  first  set  about  trying  to  think 
of  a  way  of  escape  from  destruction,  being  throughout 
"  loath  to  perish  " — a  fact  which,  viewed  in  its  results,  indi- 
cates the  relative  intactness  of  his  highest  mental  functions 
amidst  all  his  gloom. 

Except  for  the  automatic  processes  with  the  Scripture 
passages,  Bunyan 's  condition  of  secondary  melancholic  de- 
pression had,  therefore,  despite  its  depth  and  its  fantastic 
background,  many  of  the  more  benign  characters  of  normal 
grief.  It  had,  at  the  worst,  its  occasional  remissions.  It 
left  his  reasoning  powers  formally  unaffected.  And  it  had 
the  painful  but  really  invaluable  character  that,  just  be- 
cause his  fate  seemed  decided,  he  had  a  long  and  almost 
total  rest  from  the  irritating  motor  processes,  whose  depend- 
ence upon  his  past  habits  of  conscientious  anxiety  is  thus 
all  the  more  confirmed.  For  this  restless  anxiety,  the  pretty 
steady  assurance  of  damnation  was  now  substituted.  This, 
as  the  event  proved,  Bunyan 's  heroic  disposition  was  strong 
enough  to  endure,  despite  the  "  splitting  "  sensations  in  the 
breast,  despite  the  long  days  of  grief  and  of  lonely  lamenta- 
tion; despite  his  inability  to  get  any  comfort  or  help 
from  his  few  advisers.  The  case  was  still  grave  enough, 
but  this  light  melancholia  proved  to  be  a  decidedly  kinder 
disorder  than  the  foregoing  one,  and  it  led  the  way  over 
to  recovery. 

In  the  long  tale  which  follows,  in  Bunyan 's  Autobiogra- 
phy, ;nul  which  is  largely  devoted  to  the  description  of  the 
inner  conflicts  amongst  the  Scripture  passages  (of  whose 
automatic  evolutions  poor  Bunyan's  consciousness  was  now 
lon^  tin-  merely  passive  theatre),  there  are  but  few  things 
further  to  be  noted  for  our  purpose.  But  these  few  are  ex- 
instructive. 


68  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

The  gradual  emergence  from  despair  is  obviously  due,  on 
the  whole,  to  the  vis  medicatrix  naturae.  Bunyan's  gen- 
eral physical  health  gradually  improved.  His  conscientious 
habits  of  life,  freed  now  from  the  tempter's  teasing  inter- 
ferences, had  a  chance  to  become  healthily  fixed  and  uncon- 
scious. He  grieved  too  deeply  to  long  for  distractions,  and 
never  thought  of  returning  to  his  youthful  sins  as  a  relief 
from  despair.  The  doubts  and  other  motor  inconveniences 
were  of  course  still  in  the  background  of  his  mental  life, 
but  it  is  interesting  to  note  how,  whenever  they  appear,  they 
are  now  simply  overshadowed  and  devitalized  by  the  fixed 
presence  of  the  ruling  melancholic  ideas.  The  tempter  is 
thus  at  length  known  as  a  relatively  foreign  and  mocking 
other  self,  whose  power  over  Bunyan's  will  grows  less  even 
while  his  triumph  is  supposed  to  be  final.  He  "becomes 
humorous,"  as  Froude  observes.  Bunyan,  so  the  tempter 
suggests  in  his  old  metaphysical  way  and  with  the  old 
doubting  subtlety — Bunyan  had  better  not  pray  any  more, 
since  God  must  be  weary  of  the  whole  business ;  or  if  he 
must  pray,  let  it  be  to  some  other  person  of  the  Trinity  in- 
stead of  to  the  directly  insulted  Mediator.  Could  not  a  new 
plan  of  salvation  be  devised  by  special  arrangement,  the 
Father  this  time  kindly  acting  as  mediator  with  the  other- 
wise implacable  Son,  to  meet  Bunyan's  exceptional  case  ? 
But  such  suggestions,  which  in  an  earlier  stage  would  have 
been  "  fearful  blasphemies,"  now  have  to  stand  in  contrast 
to  the  fixed  and  central  grief  which  constitutes  Bunyan's 
own  personal  consciousness.  Bunyan  knows  by  the  very 
contrast  that  these  suggested  words  of  the  tempter  are  not 
his  own.  This  is  the  mere  fooling  of  the  exultant  devil.  It 
is  meaningless.  For  Bunyan  is  consciously  on  the  side  of 
the  grief  itself,  and  the  humorous  tempter  is  the  sole  owner 
of  the  blasphemies,  which  therefore  serve  all  the  more  to 
"  confirm  "  the  sufferer  in  his  painful  faith.  A  better  device 
than  this  for  the  "  segmentation  "  of  insistent  questionings 


THE  CASE  OF  JOHN  BUNYAN.  69 

could  not  have  been  imagined  by  any  physician  learned  in 
the  cure  of  souls.  The  victorious  tempter  had  unwittingly 
dug  his  own  grave.  He  could  never  again  get  possession  of 
this  man's  central  self,  nor  use  this  brain  as  a  foundation 
for  systematized  evil  habits. 

Another  instructive  aspect  of  the  slow  process  of  recov- 
ery lies  in  the  fact  that  Bunyan  was,  towards  the  end,  able, 
at  some  moments,  and  despite  his  always  busy  dialectic  pro- 
cesses, to  win  that  attitude  of  complete  resignation,  of  aban- 
donment of  all  feverish  conscious  strugglings  and  pleadings 
with  fate — that  attitude  which,  as  experience  shows,  is  so 
often  the  beginning  of  a  final  recovery  from  all  forms  of 
deeper  mental  distress.  Such  an  attitude  is  consistent,  as  it 
was  in  Bunyan,  with  a  good  deal  of  cool  consideration,  and 
with  much  activity  of  thought ;  but  it  was  still  effectively 
assumed.  There  is,  for  such  sufferers  as  Bunyan,  and  for 
many  others,  a  mood  of  gentler  despair  that  is  often  essen- 
tially healing,  because,  as  compared  to  their  old  feverish- 
ness,  it  is  peaceful.  It  is  the  sort  of  despair  that  Edgar  Poe 
has  put  on  record  in  the  admirably  psychological  lines  For 
Annie.  It  is  the  mood  that  says,  to  the  tempestuous  striv- 
ing self  of  former  days,  "  Ich  haV  meine  Sache  auf  Nichts 
gesetzt."1  One  is  lost ;  only  eternal  mercy  can  save ;  one 
finally  is  content  to  leave  all  to  fate  or  to  God,  and  to  "lie 
quietly,"  like  the  conscious  corpse  of  Poe's  poem,  glad  a 
little  that  the  "fever  called  living  is  ended  at  length." 
Bunyan  is  remote  enough  in  type  from  Poe's  lover ;  and  he 
was  never  content  long  to  lie  quiet  But  still,  at  moments, 
tliis  essentially  curative  element  also  is  present  in  this  stage 
of  his  experience.  The  automatic  play  of  the  remembered 
Scripture  passages  became  with  him  more  and  more  com- 
plex, imposing,  unpredictable — an  inner  fate  that  he  often 
h« -Iplessly  watched  as  one  watches  the  breaking  of  great 
waves  on  the  beach.  Plainly  God  must  be  directing  tin- 
process.  Bunyan  could  only  pray  that  God's  will  might  bo 


70  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

done,  and  hope  that  so  many  kind  glimpses  of  light  would 
not  have  been  shown  to  an  utter  outcast.  "  God  and  Christ," 
he  says,  "  were  continually  before  my  face,"  and,  painful  as 
the  experience  was,  since  he  was  facing  his  judge,  this  kept 
down,  as  he  himself  recognizes,  all  the  old  temptations  to 
"  atheism."  At  last  "  I  saw  .  .  .  that  it  was  not  my  good 
frame  of  heart  that  made  my  Righteousness  better,  nor  my 
bad  frame  that  made  my  Righteousness  worse;  for  my 
righteousness  was  Jesus  Christ  himself,  the  same  yester- 
day, to-day,  and  forever."  And  "  now,"  he  says,  in  nar- 
rating this  last  experience,  "did  my  chains  fall  off  my 
Legs  indeed."  Such  is  the  healing  virtue  of  true  resigna- 
tion. 

The  episodes  of  this  whole  long  final  stage  were  of  course 
numerous  and  of  Protean  character.  There  was  through- 
out, despite  the  prevalence  of  the  general  despair,  consider- 
able instability  of  mood.  Intervals  of  peace,  resulting  from 
this  or  that  "  sweet  glance  "  of  a  "  Promise,"  were  sometimes 
followed  by  the  wildest  fits  of  gloom.  Two  or  three  times  the 
borderland  pseudo-hallucinations  of  speech  returned.  Once, 
in  particular,  at  a  moment  of  this  sort,  the  accompanying 
experience  of  calm  "  made  a  strange  seizure  upon  my  spirit ; 
it  brought  light  with  it,  and  commanded  a  silence  in  my 
heart  of  all  those  tumultuous  thoughts  that  before  did  use, 
like  masterless  hell-hounds,  to  roar  and  bellow  and  make  a 
hideous  noise  within  me."  And  this  sudden  transformation 
of  mood,  produced  by  a  comforting  voice  that  was  "  as  if 
heard,"  was  so  great  that,  many  years  later,  though  writing 
in  a  very  cautious  and  self-critical  spirit,  Bunyan  could  not 
refrain,  in  a  later  edition  of  the  Grace  Abounding,  from 
inserting  this  incident,  and  adding  his  private  opinion  that 
this  might  indeed  have  been  "  an  Angel "  that  "  had  come 
upon  me."  Yet  no  element  of  actual  delusion  was,  at  the 
time,  involved  in  the  experience.  As  for  the  Scripture  pas- 
sages, their  automatic  effects  were  such  that  Bunyan  ere 


THE  CASE  OF  JOHN  BUNYAN.  71 

long  found  himself  awaiting  with  interest  what  would  hap- 
pen when  two,  already  known  and  often  studied  "  words " 
should,  by  chance,  "  meet  in  my  heart " — an  event  which 
might  prove  to  him  of  the  most  critical  importance,  al- 
though, beforehand,  he  could  do  positively  nothing  to  has- 
ten or  to  effect  this  event  by  any  voluntary  consideration 
of  the  passages.  Only  when  the  suggested  passages  were 
numerous,  and  the  "  meeting "  had  already  often  occurred, 
could  he  devote  himself,  with  his  accustomed  dialectic 
skill,  to  considering  with  care  the  outcome  and  its  mean- 
ing— a  thing  which,  just  before  his  recovery,  he  learned 
to  do,  in  some  cases,  very  coolly  and  with  great  delibera- 
tion. 

The  passing  of  this  stage  of  despair  was  attended,  at  the 
end,  with  many  of  the  usual  exaltations  and  confusions  of 
convalescence.  "  I  had  two  or  three  times,  at  about  my 
deliverance  from  this  temptation,  such  strange  apprehen- 
sions of  the  grace  of  God,  that  I  could  hardly  bear  up  under 
it ;  it  was  so  out  of  measure  amazing,  when  I  thought  it 
could  reach  me,  that  I  do  think,  if  that  sense  of  it  had 
abode  long  upon  me,  it  would  have  made  me  incapable  of 
business/' 

VII. 

The  cure  had  come  to  pass,  but  it  was,  and  remained,  a 
cure  with  a  pretty  well-defined  defect.  The  tempter  could 
never  again  obtain  control.  The  diseased  habits  were  re- 
duced to  their  elements,  and  were  unable  to  systematize 
themselves  afresh.  The  elements,  however,  proved,  as  one 
would  expect  in  such  a  case,  too  deeply  founded  in  this 
wonderful  constitution  ever  to  be  eliminated.  At  the  end 
of  the  Grace  Abounding  Bunyan,  with  the  simplest  humil- 
ity, records  the  temptations  to  which  his  soul  is  now  perma- 
nently subjected.  His  moods  of  spiritual  interest  and 
emotion  are  to  a  very  considerable  extent  unstable,  do  what 
he  may.  There  are  times  when  he  is  "  filled  with  darkness," 


72  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

however  much,  at  other  times,  he  may  have  been  exalted. 
His  heart  becomes,  at  the  dark  times,  "  dead  and  dry,"  and 
he  can  then  find  no  "  comfort."  He  is  also  still  occasionally 
tempted  "  to  doubt  the  being  of  God  and  the  Truth  of  his 
Gospel " ;  and  this  is  always  the  "  worst "  of  moods. 
Furthermore,  in  his  preaching,  the  tempter  often  besets  him 
"  with  thoughts  of  blasphemy,"  which  he  is  "  strongly 
tempted  to  speak  "  "  before  the  congregation  " ;  or  again,  a 
strange  confusion  of  head  comes  upon  him  as  he  preaches, 
and  straitens  "  him,  so  that  he  feels  "  as  if  I  had  not  known 
or  remembered  what  I  have  been  about,  or  as  if  my  head 
had  been  in  a  bag  all  the  time  of  the  Exercise."  More  sub- 
tle assaults  of  the  tempter  also  come  while  he  preaches — 
condemnations  of  this  or  that  which  he  knows  it  to  be  his 
duty  to  utter,  or  on  the  other  hand  movings  "  to  pride  and 
liftings  up  of  heart."  For  a  while  after  his  malady,  when 
he  had  joined  the  church,  he  was  tempted  to  blaspheme 
during  the  sacraments.  In  any  of  his  illnesses,  peculiarly 
black  and  cowardly  thoughts  always  come.  At  the  begin- 
ning of  his  imprisonment  he  long  felt  himself  to  be  a  hope- 
less coward,  unable  because  unworthy  to  suffer  for  the  faith, 
and  the  tempter  mocked  this  weakness  with  all  the  old 
subtlety. 

But  now — here  is  the  important  thing — all  these  perma- 
nent enemies  are  still,  and  remain  for  the  rest  of  Bunyan's 
life,  in  no  wise  uncontrollable.  His  deeper  consciousness  is 
beset,  but  never  overwhelmed,  by  them.  His  attitude 
towards  them  becomes  objective,  resigned.  They  teach  him 
to  "watch  and  be  sober."  They  are  useful  to  him,  since 
"they  keep  me  from  trusting  my  heart."  Of  one  of  his 
later  hours  of  darkness  he  says :  "  I  would  not  have  been 
without  this  Trial  for  much.  I  am  comforted  every  time  I 
think  of  it,  and  I  hope  I  shall  bless  God  forever  for  the 
teaching  I  have  had  by  it.  Many  more  of  the  dealings  of 
God  towards  me  I  might  relate,  but  these  out  of  the  spoils 


THE  CASE  OF  JOHN  BUNYAN.  73 

won  in  Battle  have  I  dedicated  to  maintain  the  house  of 
God."  The  words  are  typical  of  all  the  later  inner  expe- 
rience of  Bunyan ;  and  it  is  to  this  spirit  in  the  man  that  we 
owe  his  immortal  works. 

Of  his  mental  regimen  after  his  recovery  a  word  may 
yet  be  said.  A  wise  instinct  guided  the  much-tried  wan- 
derer in  the  darker  world  to  forsake  henceforth  his  solitude, 
to  join  himself  "unto  the  people  of  God,"  to  try  to  be 
objectively  serviceable,  and  to  keep  in  touch  with  the  needs 
of  his  brethren.  His  gift  of  speech  hereupon  soon  discov- 
ered itself.  He  was  erelong  set  to  preach.  His  power  won 
multitudes  of  listeners  during  all  his  years  passed  out  of 
prison.  In  prison  he  wrote  busily,  and  preached  to  his  fel- 
low-prisoners at  every  opportunity.  The  motor  speech- 
functions,  whose  inhibition  had  led  to  such  disastrously 
rebellious  insistent  habits,  were  never  again  suffered  to 
remain  without  absorbing  and  productive  exercise.  The 
decidedly  healthy  self-contempt  engendered  by  the  experi- 
ence of  his  own  weakness  only  served  to  make  him  more 
objective  in  his  whole  attitude  towards  life.  Henceforth 
he  knows  every  man  to  be  of  himself  naught  He  has 
therefore,  as  Froude  points  out,  no  favorites,  and  portrays,  in 
his  literary  work,  Talkative,  and  Ignorance,  and  Mr.  Bad- 
man,  with  as  much  cool  devotion  to  the  task  and  with  as 
much  artistic  faithfulness,  as  Christian.  He  spares  no  one, 
himself  least  of  all.  Yet  he  sympathizes  with  every  manner 
of  human  weakness,  for  his  own  inner  life  has  furnished 
him  with  a  brief  abstract  and  epitome  of  all  human  frailty. 
His  mastery  is  the  mastery  of  the  genius  who  has  really  en- 
tered the  Valley  of  the  Shadow  and  has  passed  through. 
Hence  the  seeming  of  the  man  in  the  eyes  of  those  who 
knew  him  in  later  life,  and  who  could  not  easily  have  sus- 
pected, in  this  modest  yet  commanding  presence,  the  piteous 
weaknesses  of  his  younger  years,  had  he  himself  not  so 
instructively  told  the  wonderful  story.  • 


74  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

Our  result  can  be  briefly  stated.  This  is  unquestionably 
a  fairly  typical  case  of  a  now  often  described  mental  disor- 
der. The  peculiarities  of  this  special  case  lie  largely  in  the 
powers  of  the  genius  who  here  suffered  from  the  malady. 
A  man  of  sensitive  and  probably  somewhat  burdened  nerv- 
ous constitution,  whose  family  history,  however,  so  far  as  it 
is  known  to  us,  gives  no  positive  evidence  of  serious  heredi- 
tary weakness,  is  beset  in  childhood  with  frequent  nocturnal 
and  even  diurnal  terrors  of  a  well-known  sort.  In  youth, 
after  an  early  marriage,  under  the  strain  of  a  life  of  poverty 
and  of  many  religious  anxieties,  he  develops  elementary 
insistent  dreads  of  a  conscientious  sort, 'and  later  a  collection 
of  habits  of  questioning  and  of  doubt  which  erelong  reach 
and  obviously  pass  the  limits  of  the  normal.  His  general 
physical  condition  meanwhile  failing,  in  a  fashion  that,  in 
the  light  of  our  very  imperfect  information  concerning  this 
aspect  of  the  case,  still  appears  to  be  of  some  neurasthenic 
type,  there  now  appears  a  highly  systematized  mass  of  in- 
sistent motor  speech-functions  of  the  most  painful  sort, 
accompanied  with  still  more  of  the  same  fears,  doubts,  and 
questions.  After  enduring  for  a  pretty  extended  period, 
after  one  remission,  and  also  after  a  decided  change  in  the 
contents  of  the  insistent  elements,  the  malady  then  more 
rapidly  approaches  a  dramatic  crisis,  which  leaves  the  suf- 
ferer for  a  long  period  in  a  condition  of  secondary  melan- 
cholic depression,  of  a  somewhat  benign  type — a  depression 
from  which,  owing  to  a  deep  change  of  his  mental  habits, 
and  to  an  improvement  of  his  physical  condition,  he  finally 
emerges  cured,  although  with  defect,  of  his  greatest  ene- 
my— the  systematized  insistent  impulses.  This  entire  mor- 
bid experience  has  lasted  some  four  years.  Henceforth, 
nnder  a  skilful  self-imposed  mental  regimen,  this  man, 
although  always  a  prey  to  elementary  insistent  temp- 
tations and  to  fits  of  deep  depression  of  mood,  has  no 
return  of  his  more  systematized  disorders,  and  endures 


THE  CASE  OP  JOUN  BUN  VAN.  75 

heavy   burdens  of   work   and    of    fortune   with    excellent 
success. 

Such  is  the  psychological  aspect  of  a  story  whose 
human  and  spiritual  interest  is  and  remains  of  the  very 
highest. 


m. 

TENNYSON  AND  PESSIMISM* 

THE  bitter  criticism  that  greeted  the  appearance  of  Lord 
Tennyson's  second  Locksley  Hall  shows  how  much  people 
still  loved  the  first  Locksley  Hall,  and  how  little  they  had 
learned  from  it.  An  almost  universal  opinion  declared  the 
new  poem  to  be  a  purely  abnormal  product,  whereas  the  first 
poem,  according  to  the  same  opinion,  was  something  quite 
natural  and  healthy.  The  new  Locksley  Hall  was  thus  de- 
nounced as  a  sort  of  treason.  This  cruel  father,  people  said, 
sacrifices  the  child  of  his  own  youth.  This  worn-out  old 
hero  shows  himself  at  last  before  all  the  world  as  a  coward, 
and  whines  where  once  he  sang  the  battle-hymn.  This  Tory 
lord  now  bids  crouch  whom  the  rest  bade  aspire.  Such  was 
the  general  sense  of  popular  criticism,  at  least  in  this  country. 
And,  at  first  sight,  what  could  be  more  natural  than  this 
judgment  ?  The  first  Locksley  Hall  gave  us  a  view  of  life 
so  honest,  so  youthful,  so  modern,  so  comprehensible,  that  it 
would  seem  as  if  nobody  capable  of  feeling  what  young  men 
feel,  could  fail  to  adopt  that  view,  or,  having  adopted  it,  could 
abandon  it  without  regret.  If  now  the  creator  of  this  old 
ideal  appears  as  its  denouncer  and  destroyer,  can  we  who 
loved  the  old  poem  do  anything  but  condemn  the  final 
mood  of  its  maker. 

•Locksley  Hall   Sixty  Years  After,  etc.    By  Alfred,  Lord  Tennyson. 
New  York :  Macmillan  &  Co. 

76 


TENNYSON  AND  PESSIMISM.  77 

But  this  popular  view  was  no  less  plausible  than  unjust. 
In  fact  the  second  Locksley  Hall  is,  despite  a  certain  falling 
off  of  technical  skill,  still  substantially  the  fulfillment  of  the 
first.  Whatever  unhealthiness  exists  in  the  latest  poem,  is 
in  germ  in  the  original  one,  and,  on  the  whole,  the  new 
poem,  notwithstanding  a  number  of  frantic  opinions  and  of 
unpleasant  lines,  is  healthier,  more  manly,  more  devout, 
and  even  more  cheerful,  in  a  deeper  sense  of  the  word  cheer- 
ful, than  was  the  first  poem.  Neither  poem  is  truly  sound. 
Both  suffer  from  the  same  disease.  Both  illustrate  Tenny- 
son's characteristic  weakness.  But  of  the  two  the  old  man's 
poem,  if  artistically  inferior,  is  ethically  higher,  and  for  this 
reason  is  far  more  satisfying.  Such  is  the  thesis  that  this 
paper  wants  to  defend. 

What  has  made  people  blind  to  this  is  the  fact  that  the  dis- 
ease from  which  both  of  these  poems  suffer  is  a  very  preva- 
lent disease.  It  is  a  cause  of  numerous  modern  superstitions, 
and  casts  a  gloom  over  many  lives.  We  need  to  become 
conscious  of  its  nature,  and  to  get  rid  of  it  from  our  own 
minds.  For  my  part,  then,  I  am  thankful  to  our  poet  for 
the  second  Locksley  Hall,  because,  taken  with  the  first,  it  il- 
lustrates so  well  and  so  instructively  a  great  man's  conflict 
with  this,  the  favorite  disease  of  his  age.  I  should  be  glad 
if  people  saw  this  truth  more  readily,  and  I  venture  upon 
the  few  hasty  suggestions  which  follow  for  the  sake  of 
helping  others,  possibly,  to  direct  their  attention  to  the 
matter. 

A  devout  man  is  one  who  believes  that  there  is  some- 
thing in  the  world  which  demands  both  his  worship  and  his 
loyalty,  and  who,  accordingly,  tries  to  worship  and  be  loyal. 
Now,  if  any  man  seeks  to  be  devout,  his  great  difficulty  is 
that  he  is  all  the  while  in  the  midst  of  petty  and  disheartening 
things,  which  at  once  attract,  corrupt,  pain  and  horrify  him. 
In  his  religious  faith,  or  in  his  poetry,  or  in  his  dreams,  he 
therefore  tries  somehow  to  neutralize,  or  to  explain  away,  or 


78  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

at  the  worst  occasionally  to  forget,  this  baseness  of  the  details 
of  life.  Only  when  he  can  somehow  either  transcend  or  for- 
sake these  coarse  facts,  has  he  the  chance  to  feel  the  desired 
devotion.  "  If,  therefore,  there  is  anything  divine  in  the 
world,"  he  says  to  himself,  u  I  shall  not  find  it  while  I  am 
joined  to  these  cloying  and  hateful  experiences."  And  so 
he  asks  of  his  religious  teachers,  or  of  his  poets,  or  of  the 
others  who  have  spiritual  wares  to  offer  him,  that  they  shall 
somehow  purge  his  soul,  from  time  to  time,  of  the  corrup- 
tion of  finite  things,  and  show  him  that  divine  good,  what- 
ever he  chooses  to  call  it,  which  is  to  be  the  true  object  of 
his  loyalty. 

Now,  since  this  is  the  natural  desire  of  a  good  man,  it  is 
also  but  natural  that  everybody  at  some  time  tries  to  take 
the  shortest  road  to  this  goal  of  spiritual  freedom.  To  get 
above  the  petty  and  coarse  things  of  life,  we  must  forget 
them,  so  we  say.  This  seems  the  only  fashion  of  escape. 
In  consequence  of  this  resolve,  we  often  ask  of  our  poets  not 
so  much  that  they  shall  transcend,  as  that  they  shall  disguise 
or  deny,  or  ignore,  the  coarseness  of  the  real  world.  "  Hide 
it,"  we  say  to  them,  "  declare  it  unreal,  dream  it  away,  talk 
of  it  as  illusion.  Deliver  us  from  evil  by  simply  destroy- 
ing the  very  idea  of  it,  so  long  as  we  are  in  your  company." 
When  we  make  this  demand  of  our  poets,  we  ask  them  to  be 
romantic,  and  the  poets  who  habitually  appeal  to  this  de- 
mand are  called  the  romantic  poets.  As  is  well  known, 
however,  Lord  Tennyson  himself  is  a  romantic  poet.  Al- 
ways one  of  the  most  devout  of  men,  he  gives  as  his  ideal 
of  the  devout  mood  something  that  can  be  realized  only 
through  a  more  or  less  complete  separation  from  the  world 
of  concrete  life.  He  offers  us  the  things  of  the  spirit  in 
sacred  places,  not  elsewhere.  His  realm  of  divine  truth  is 
and  always  was  for  him  a  dream-land,  to  be  reached  through 
mystical  exaltation,  or  by  the  ecstatic  fancies  of  hopeful 
youth.  He  has  believed  in  God,  but  in  a  God  that  hideth 


TENNYSON  AND  PESSIMISM.  79 

himself,  and  that  still  showeth  himself,  on  rare  and  roman- 
tic occasions,  to  the  devout.  This  is  the  God  of  the  Holy 
Grail,  or  of  the  wondrous  mystical  experience  during  the 
night  scene  on  the  lawn,  in  the  In  Memoriam.  This  God, 
to  tell  the  truth,  seems  afraid  of  his  own  world.  He  doubt- 
less knows  our  frame,  and  remembers  that  we  are  dust,  but  he 
regards  us  meanwhile  with  a  distant,  although  mildly  piti- 
ful negligence.  On  occasion  he  lets  us  catch  glimpses  of 
himself,  but  there  is  neither  rule  nor  rationality  about  the 
coming  of  these  glimpses.  "Look  at  me  if  you  can,"  the 
divine  truth  says  to  us.  Otherwise  we  seem  to  form  no  part 
of  its  business.  We  are  not  the  sort  of  people  that  it  habit- 
ually meets  in  a  social  way. 

All  this  is  only  a  malter-of-fact  statement  of  the  romantic 
spirit,  familiar  to  us,  of  course,  in  many  poets  besides  Lord  Ten- 
nyson. But  it  is  needful  to  remind  ourselves  what  this  spirit 
means,  in  order  that  we  may  see  just  now  how  it  expresses 
itself  in  the  first  Locksley  Hall.  In  that  poem,  to  be  sure, 
there  is  nothing  of  what  one  usually  calls  mysticism.  There 
is,  in  fact,  no  theology  at  all.  Hence,  indeed,  the  essentially 
modern  sound  of  the  verses.  Lord  Tennyson's  age  is  doubt- 
less out  of  harmony,  and  from  the  first  has  been  out  of  har- 
mony, with  the  more  esoteric  and  theological  element  in 
his  romanticism.  Yet  this  age  has  no  sort  of  objection  to 
divinely  significant  truth,  if  only  you  can  express  it  in 
t« mis  of  well-known  astronomical,  physical,  or  biological 
theories,  and  can  make  it  sound  unmiraculous.  That,  in  a 
fashion,  was  what  the  first  Locksley  Hall  did,  by  means  of 
a  few  skilful  and  even  prophetic  phrases.  What  the  age 
views  with  great  dislike,  namely,  the  expression  of  the 
higher  truth  in  traditional  or  in  mystical  forms,  was  what 
the  first  Locksley  Hall  ingeniously  avoided.  Hence  people 
who  make  little  or  nothing  of  In  Memoriam,  who  find  all 
the  Idyls  of  the  King  at  their  best  too  fanciful,  and  who 
think  the  Holy  Grail  quite  unintelligible,  may  still  admire 


80  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

endlessly  the  dreams  about  the  far-off  future  in  Locksley 
Hall. 

Yet  Locksley  Hall  is  percisely  as  romantic  and  as  full 
of  the  remote  ideals  as  is  the  Holy  Grail.  You  may  state 
the  thing  in  mediaeval  terms  if  you  like,  or  in  terms  of  fan- 
cies about  flying-machines  and  international  Federations. 
Yet  the  result  is  precisely  the  same.  The  world  that  you 
move  in  is,  in  both  cases,  the  old  romantic  world,  the  land 
of  magic  fire,  of  talismans,  and  of  a  beautiful  darkness. 
You  are  on  a  quest  for  the  ideal.  It  is  a  sort  of  creature 
that  won't  be  caught  in  a  commonplace  way.  You  must 
go  on  knightly  wanderings,  and  lose  yourself  in  deserts  and 
oceans.  The  mighty  wind  arises,  roaring  seaward,  and  you 
go.  Your  business  is  somewhat  indescribable.  You  are 
sure  only  that  it  is  vastly  important.  Its  most  prominent 
feature  is  that  it  takes  you  away  from  earthly  relations. 
You  are  shamed  through  all  your  being  to  have  loved  so 
slight  a  thing  as  an  actual  flesh-and-blood  woman,  who,  of 
course,  must  have  been  quite  incapable  of  understanding 
such  a  nature  as  yours.  Nevertheless,  after  all  your  misfor- 
tunes, the  crescent  promise  of  your  spirit  has  not  set,  and 
you  propose  to  do  something  on  a  grand  scale.  The  out- 
come of  the  business  will  be  some  sort  of  ineffable  glory  for 
future  humanity.  The  distance  beacons,  and  not  in  vain. 
You  cry  "  forward,"  quite  ignorant,  of  course,  of  just  what 
the  word  means,  but  sure  that  if  we  only  get  far  enough 
away  from  where  we  are,  we  shall  not  fail  to  find  perfection. 
The  good  is  something  absolutely  and  fatally  destined  to  be 
reached  by  us,  although  it  is  also  of  a  certainty  something 
so  very  remote  that  we  have  not  the  least  idea  when  we 
shall  reach  it  Such,  then,  is  your  Holy  Grail,  your  increas- 
ing purpose  that  runs  through  the  ages,  your  divine  truth. 
Your  description  of  its  features  may  vary,  but  it  always  has 
the  same  "  unmistakable  marks,"  by  which  you  may  know 
it  wheresoever  you  go. 


TENNYSON  AND  PESSIMISM.  81 

This  summary  may  perhaps  seem  mere  scoffing.  The 
matter  has,  of  course,  another  side.  This  devotion  to  a 
vague  and  romantic  ideal,  which  is  chiefly  defined  by  the 
fact  that  it  is  a  good  way  off,  has  its  strong  features.  The 
purity  of  intention  is,  in  Lord  Tennyson's  poems,  undoubted. 
Their  educating  value,  in  their  place  and  time,  is  of  the 
highest  How  much  we  owe  to  this  teacher  of  the  ideal  in 
a  sordid  age,  who  may  know  ?  But  if,  for  the  sake  of  awak- 
ing our  enthusiasm,  these  vague  dreams  of  abstract  perfec- 
tion are  invaluable,  we  must  never  forget  two  things  about 
them  :  first,  that  they  are  never  the  only  expressions,  never 
the  highest  expressions,  of  the  love  of  ideals ;  and,  second, 
that  the  invariable  outcome  of  such  dreams,  unless  they 
give  place  to  some  more  solid  sort  of  idealism,  is  sooner  or 
later  hateful  and  pessimistic  despair.  This  romantic  ideal- 
ism of  so  many  among  Tennyson's  poems,  is,  therefore,  not 
only  vague,  but  essentially  transient.  In  case  of  the  mood 
of  Locksley  Hall,  also,  the  idealism  must  give  place  to  a 
deeper  and  less  romantic  devotion,  or  else  it  must  end  in 
out  and  out  pessimism.  The  second  Locksley  Hall  espe- 
cially shows  us  in  what  sense  the  first  Locksley  Hall  was 
already,  in  germ,  a  pessimistic  poem. 

For  in  the  first  Locksley  Hall,  if  we  will  be  honest  with 
it,  there  is  plainly  great  faith  that  God  is  the  God  of  the 
future ;  but  in  no  true  sense  does  he  appear  as  the  God  of 
tin-  present.  The  present  is  a  world  of  wicked  squires,  who 
drink  wine  and  love  dogs,  of  false  and  fickle  cousins — who 
probably  lie  awake  o'  nights  weeping  because  they  feel 
themselves  unworthy  of  our  high  regard— and  in  general 
of  social  lies  and  sickly  forms.  There  are  a  few  good  people 
in  it,  in  the  foremost  ranks  of  time,  namely  ;  but  their  con- 
cern is  not  with  its  absurdities,  but  with  the  service  of  the 
ideal  future  humanity.  The  noble  youth  of  the  poem  is 
simply  a  pessimist  as  to  the  world  that  now  is.  It  is  out  of 
joint,  and  he  is  not  born  to  set  that  world  right,  but  rather 


82  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

to  forget  it.  His  optimism  concerns  the  world  that  is  not, 
but  some  day  shall  be.  Of  that,  all  sorts  of  amusing  things 
are  true.  God's  attention  is  plainly  devoted  to  the  realms 
of  dreams,  and  the  divine  plan  has  no  place  for  the  squire 
and  the  cousin.  This  of  course  is  optimism  with  a  ven- 
geance, but  is  it  not  also  in  a  much  deeper  sense  pessimism  ? 
God  is  not  in  this  place,  and  Jacob,  on  a  famous  occasion, 
made  a  blunder.  God  is  somewhere  else,  sleeping,  as  it 
were,  or  on  a  journey,  and  we  must  set  out  to  find  him. 
Nay  then,  is  not  this  optimism  of  progress,  this  assurance 
that  the  divine  truth  is  still  playing  truant,  a  very  dark 
thought,  after  all  ?  "  One  increasing  purpose,"  indeed !  But 
so  far  it  has  culminated  in  the  squire  and  the  social  lies 
aforesaid.  What  is  wanted  is  still  a  very  great  increase  of 
this  "  purpose."  For  thus  far  we  have  to  curse  very  frank- 
ly, in  the  poem,  pretty  much  all,  save  our  noble  selves,  that 
the  "  purpose  "  has  produced.  Where  then  is  the  "  promise 
of  his  coming  ? "  Or  rather,  what  is  it  all  but  a  bare  and 
wearisomely  reiterated  promise,  whose  fulfillment  is  only  in 
dream-land,  and  is  apparently  there  to  stay  for  as  long  as 
we  can  definitely  foresee.  But  then  the  "distance  beacons." 
Yet  it  is  only  distance,  only  the  far-off.  There  is  no  mean- 
ing in  life  save  what  that  far-off  gives  to  it.  Das  Dort  ist 
niemals  Hier.  At  heart  then,  despite  all  our  fervor,  we  are 
only  pessimists.  The  good  is  somewhere,  just  as  "  oats  and 
beans  and  barley  grows  where  you  nor  I  nor  nobody  knows." 
And  that  is  the  whole  tale  of  our  airy  and  meaningless 
hopes.  We  have  only  to  wake  up  to  this  fact  to  turn  all 
our  enthusiasm  into  disaster  and  gloom. 

Now  in  so  far  as  the  second  Locksley  Hall  is  truly  pes- 
simistic at  all,  its  pessimism  is  simply  the  explicit  statement 
of  the  sense  of  this  very  thought.  Unless  God  is  here,  says 
in  substance  the  poet  of  the  second  Locksley  Hall,  how  do 
you  know  that  he  is  anywhere  else  ?  Unless  the  present  has 
divine  meaning,  how  worthless  the  dreams  of  a  far-off  starry 


TENNYSON  AND  PESSIMISM.  83 

future,  dreams  comparable  only  to  the  fancies  about  the 
perfect  life  that  may  dwell  in  the  other  planets : 

Hesper — Venus — were  we  native  to  that  splendour  or  in  Mare, 
We  should  see  the  Globe  we  groan  in,  fairest  of  their  evening  stare. 

Could  we  dream  of  ware  and  carnage,  craft  and  madness,  lust  and  spite, 
Roaring  London,  raving  Paris,  in  that  point  of  peaceful  light  i 

Might  we  not  in  glancing  heavenward  on  a  star  so  silver- fair 
Yearn,  and  clasp  the  hands  and  murmur, "  Would  to  God  that  we  were 
there!  " 

"  What  are  men  that  He  should  heed  us  ?  "  cried  the  king  of  sacred  song ; 
Insects  of  an  hour,  that  hourly  work  their  brother  insects  wrong, 

While  the  silent  Heavens  roll,  and  Suns  along  their  fiery  way, 
All  their  planets  whirling  round  them,  flash  a  million  miles  a  day. 

Such  are  the  thoughts  that  finally  determine  the  poet  to 
give  up  the  optimism  of  progress.  The  process  of  the  world, 
such  as  it  is,  is  far  too  vast  to  be  expressed  in  merely  tem- 
poral terms.  Kegarded  in  tune  merely,  there  is  doubt  about 
all  this  plan.  There  seems  at  all  events  to  be  rhythm  as 
well  as  growth : 

Evolution  ever  climbing  after  some  ideal  good, 
And  Reversion  ever  dragging  Evolution  in  the  mud. 

And  so  much  that  we  take  to  be  progress,  after  all,  turns 
out  not  to  be  such!  Still  again,  where  we  are  in  doubt 
about  the  reality  of  anything  that  we  have  called  progress, 
we  become  appalled  at  once  by  the  magnitude  of  the  powers 
of  the  world.  How,  looking  at  them  externally,  can  we  be 
sure  of  their  meaning  ? 

Forward,  backward,  backward,  forward,  in  the  immeasurable  sea, 
Bway'd  by  vaster  ebbs  and  flows  than  can  be  known  to  you  or  me. 

To  be  sure,  even  now  we  can  repeat  our  youthful  dreams  of 
the  future  peace  and  perfection  of  humanity.  Perhaps  there 
will  come  an  "  end  after  madness  "  for  our  poor  earth : 


84  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

Every  tiger  madness  muzzled,  every  serpent  passion  killed, 
Every  grim  ravine  a  garden,  every  blazing  desert  till'd, 

Robed  in  universal  harvest  up  to  either  pole  she  smiles, 
Universal  ocean  softiy  washing  all  her  warlcss  Isles. 

But  then,  not  only  are  these  things  hard,  even  as  dreams 
("  Who  can  fancy  warless  men  ? "),  but  just  behind  all  that 
is  the  picture  of  the  physical  death  of  our  planet,  a  death 
sure  to  come  at  last.  Is  not  the  moon  dead  ?  "  The  moon- 
light is  the  sunlight,  and  the  sun  himself  will  pass."  For 
the  old  dreams  we  therefore  have  left  only  the  gloomiest  of 
mysteries,  and  the  saddest  of  assurances. 

But,  after  all,  does  not  the  true  secret  of  this  pessimism 
lie  in  our  original  abandonment  of  the  real  world  about  us 
for  that  world  of  dreams  ?  When  we  sought  the  ideal  far 
off,  and  refused  to  recognize  it  in  human  life  as  it  is,  were 
we  not  already  just  what  we  have  found  ourselves  to  be, 
pessimists  ?  Can  we  not  then  escape  our  outcome  by  aban- 
doning our  romantic  mood  ?  To  a  certain  extent,  Tennyson 
undertakes  to  do  this  in  the  new  Locksley  Hall,  and  this  is 
what  makes  me  say  that  there  is,  with  all  the  weakness  and 
the  gloom  of  this  latest  poem,  a  far  healthier  view  of  life,  in 
many  of  its  lines,  than  we  find  in  the  old  Locksley  Hall. 

First  then,  in  general,  the  poet  distinctly  recognizes  at 
last  that,  if  this  is  God's  world,  what  others  have  called  the 
"  perfection  in  imperfection "  of  just  these  struggles,  sins, 
tears,  strivings  and  loves  about  us  to-day,  must  be  the  ex- 
pression of  God's  will.  The  sins  are  none  the  less  sins  that 
they  and  the  struggle  with  them  are  alike  necessary  to  the 
genuine  realization  of  the  good.  We  need  cry  out  no  less 
against  evil  whilst  we  still  hold  evil  to  be,  not  the  transient 
absence  of  the  god  of  Evolution  from  his  world,  but  the 
living  strife  in  the  midst  of  which  the  true  God  maintains 
himself  in  his  world.  This  view  of  evil  is  the  one  that 
among  recent  poets,  Browning  has  especially  been  coramis- 


TENNYSON  AND  PESSIMISM.  85 

sioned  to  illustrate  afresh  for  us.  This  is  what  he  has  said 
in  all  his  best  poems.  But  this  view  is  the  one  that  Tenny- 
son's romanticism  has  always  tried  to  escape.  Tennyson 
has  lamented  the  evils  of  life,  but  has  never  been  ready  to 
take  them  for  what  they  are,  the  evils  of  God's  own  world. 
They  have  seemed  to  him  the  accidents  of  God's  remoteness. 
In  this  latest  poem  he  somewhat  haltingly  recognizes,  amidst 
all  his  complaints,  the  inevitable  fact.  The  good  simply  is 
not  and  cannot  be  realized,  save  in  the  midst  of  the  conflict 
with  evil.  Yet  that  truth  makes  the  good  no  less  good,  and 
the  world  no  less  divine.  Through  all  his  despair  the  poet 
now  at  last  turns  towards  this  light  as  his  only  guide : 

Follow  you  the  Star  that  lights  a  desert  pathway,  yours  or  mine. 
Forward,  till  you  see  the  highest  Human  Nature  is  divine. 

Follow  Light,  and  do  the  Right — for  man  can  half-control  his  doom — 
Till  you  find  the  deathless  Angel  seated  in  the  vacant  tomb. 

It  is  with  this  new  sort  of  faith  in  mind  that  the  poet 
says  of  our  earth,  not,  as  of  old,  that  it  is  a  joy  to  see  her 
spinning  down  the  ringing  grooves  of  change,  but  that 

Ere  she  reach  her  earthly  best,  a  God  must  mingle  with  the  game. 

He  feels  too  that  there  are  "  those  about  us  whom  we 
neither  see  nor  name."  He  is  sure  that,  amid  all  the  mys- 
teries of  the  heavens,  mysteries  upon  which  the  word  Evo- 
lution throws  no  sort  of  light,  there  must  still  be  a  living 
presence: 

Only  That  which  made  us,  meant  us  to  be  mightier  by  and  by, 
Set  the  sphere  of  all  the  boundless  Heavens  within  the  human  eye, 

Sent  the  shadow  of  Himself,  the  boundless,  thro'  the  human  soul, 
Boundless  inward,  in  the  atom,  boundless  outward  in  the  Whole. 

This  faith  is  still  vague,  it  is  still  clouded,  it  still  loves 
romantic  forms  of  speech.  But  after  all  it  is  more  genuine 
than  that  blind  old  trust  in  whatever  might  happen  to  fill 


86  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

the  remote  future.  For  if  this  mysterious  world  is  even 
now  the  world  of  a  divine  plan,  boundless  both  in  the 
whole  and  in  the  atom,  if  we  wait  not  for  some  far-off 
divine  event,  but  believe  in  the  actually  present  God,  then 
our  lives  become,  for  all  their  horror  and  their  problems,  at 
any  rate  genuine  lives.  It  is  a  game,  at  worst,  this  life  of 
ours,  and  not  a  procession.  We  play  it,  and  do  not  simply 
watch  it  to  see  what  is  some  day  to  follow : 

You,  my  Leonard,  use  and  not  abuse  your  day, 
Move  among  your  people,  know  them,  follow  him  who  led  the  way, 

Strove  for  sixty  widow'd  years  to  help  his  homelier  brother  men, 

Served  the  poor,  and  built  the  cottage,  raised  the  school  and  drained  the  fen. 

The  man  who  does  his  commonplace  business  in  the  living 
present  is,  after  all,  the  true  man.  He  fights  the  good  fight, 
and  the  good  is  nothing  if  it  is  not  the  good  fight. 

The  particular  true  man,  however,  whom  Leonard,  the 
"  grandson  "  of  the  new  poem,  is  to  follow,  is  none  other, 
be  it  noticed,  than  the  old  squire  himself,  that  dog-loving 
creature,  who  used  to  hunt  in  dreams,  and  behave  otherwise 
disagreeably.  There  is  a  beautiful  completeness  about  the 
late  apology  which  the  poet  now  makes  to  that  much 
abused  person.  Every  reader  will  be  amused  by  the  apolo- 
gy. But  possibly  some  reader  may  not  note  its  full  signifi- 
cance. Returning,  as  the  poet  does  from  the  world  of  vain 
dreams  to  the  world  of  human  beings,  he  finds  not  only 
horrible  and  gloomy  things,  such  as  fill  him  with  fear,  but 
true  and  genuine  things,  such  as  express  God's  own  heart 
Among  these  things  are  the  very  relationships  that  the 
romantic  youth  had  affected  to  despise.  Amy,  to  be  sure,  is 
gone,  long  since.  But  the  old  squire  has  lived  even  until 
yesterday.  The  poet  has  come  at  last  to  be  present  at  his 
funeral.  And  when  one  sums  up  the  squire's  hearty, 
simple,  benevolent,  unromantic  life,  one  sees  what  it 
meant; 


TENNYSON  AND  PESSIMISM.  87 

Worthier  soul  was  he  than  I  am,  sound  and  honest,  rustic  Squire, 
Kindly  landlord,  boon  companion — youthful  jealousy  is  a  liar. 

After  all,  it  is  the  straightforward  and  manly  life  that 
is  praiseworthy.  Once  it  seemed  to  us  mere  Philistinism, 
and  perhaps  in  its  narrowness  it  may  often  have  been  noth- 
ing better.  But  narrowness  is  not  cured  by  negations. 
"  Forsake  this  present  life  because  it  is  narrow,"  our  roman- 
tic youth  had  said.  Now  we  see  that  it  is  in  this  present 
life,  not  out  of  it  that  we  are  to  find  God.  Take  this  com- 
monplace life,  and  without  denying  it,  without  forsaking  it, 
make  it  no  longer  narrow.  Make  it  large  and  full,  but 
keep  it  concrete :  that  is  the  lesson  that  the  old  squire  has 
taught  us,  and  we  thank  him  for  it  as  he  lies  dead.  We 
liave  no  better  advice  for  Leonard  than  that  he  shall  fol- 
low this  example. 

Thus  then,  Tennyson's  latest  pessimism  is  not  without 
its  brighter  comrades,  courage,  and  faith  in  the  real  world. 
In  so  far  as  our  poet  has  reached  this  view  he  has  distinctly 
progressed  from  disease  toward  health.  The  old  man  thinks 
gray  thoughts,  for  he  is  gray  ;  but  not  all  his  thoughts  are 
of  death.  Experience  has  brought  him  the  end  of  romantic 
dreams,  and  his  only  hope  is  now  in  the  actual. 

One  hears  nowadays,  very  often,  of  youthful  pessimism, 
prevalent,  for  instance,  among  certain  clever  college  stu- 
dents. When  I  hear  of  these  things,  I  do  not  always  regret 
them.  On  the  contrary,  I  think  that  the  best  man  is  the 
one  who  can  see  the  truth  of  pessimism,  can  absorb  and 
transcend  that  truth,  and  can  be  nevertheless  an  optimist, 
not  by  virtue  of  his  failure  to  recognize  the  evil  of  life  but 
by  virtue  of  his  readiness  to  take  his  part  in  the  struggle 
against  this  evil.  Therefore,  I  am  often  glad  when  I  hear 
of  this  spread  of  pessimistic  ideas  among  studious  but  unde- 
veloped youth.  For  I  say  to  myself,  if  these  men  are  brave 
men,  their  sense  of  the  evil  that  hinders  our  human  life, 
will  some  day  arouse  them  to  fight  this  evil  in  dead  earnest, 


88  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

while,  if  they  are  not  brave  men,  optimism  can  be  of  no 
service  to  cowards.  But  in  any  case  I  like  to  suggest  to 
such  brave  and  pessimistic  youth  where  the  solution  of  their 
problem  must  lie.  It  surely  cannot  lie  in  any  romantic 
dream  of  a  pure  and  innocent  world,  far  off  somewhere  in 
the  future,  in  Heaven,  or  in  Isles  of  the  Blessed.  These 
things  are  not  for  us.  We  are  born  for  the  world  of  manly 
business,  and  if  we  are  worthy  of  our  destiny,  we  may  pos- 
sibly have  some  good  part  in  the  Wars  of  the  Lord.  For 
nothing  better  have  we  any  right  to  hope,  and  to  an  honest 
man  that  is  enough.  We  may  be  glad  that  our  poet  won 
at  last  the  possession  of  this  truth. 


TV. 
THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL* 

IN  a  remarkable  paper  on  Moral  Deficiencies  as  deter- 
mining Intellectual  Functions,  published  in  the  July  num- 
ber of  this  Journal,  the  learned  author  has  made  a  very 
interesting  contribution  to  that  famous  discussion  which 
was  begun,  according  to  a  very  respectable  tradition,  in  the 
Garden  of  Eden,  and  which,  in  much  more  recent  times, 
was  continued  in  the  incomparable  conversation  between 
Mephistopheles  and  the  student  in  Faust.  Every  thought- 
ful consideration  of  so  interesting  and  momentous  a  question 
is  welcome,  and  no  reader  can  doubt  the  thoughtfulness, 
and  in  many  ways  the  instructiveness,  of  the  admirably 
candid  and  fearless  essay  referred  to.  In  attempting,  as  I 
shall  here  do,  to  explain  some  of  the  relations  between  moral 
and  intellectual  development  from  a  point  of  view  not 
wholly  identical  with  that  of  the  author  of  this  former 
paper,  I  shall  do  best  to  give  my  argument  as  little  as  possi- 
ble the  directly  controversial  form.  Something  of  contro- 
versy will  indeed  creep  into  these  paragraphs;  but  the 
matter  at  issue  is  in  fact  too  real  and  tragic  to  warrant  very 
much  of  the  weighing  of  the  accuracy  or  adequacy  of  this 
or  of  that  individual  phrase  which  one  may  chance  to  find 
in  the  speech  of  one's  conscientious  fellow-student.  Our 

•International  Journal  of  Ethics,  October,  1893.  The  paper  was  sug- 
gested by  one  written  by  Professor  Gcorg  Siinmel,  of  Berlin. 

89 


90  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

words  easily  differ,  and  may  even  be  open  to  grave  mis- 
understandings— never  more  so  than  when  we  write  on  the 
intricate  relations  which  obtain  between  moral  defect  and 
intellectual  skill.  It  is  easy  therefore  to  misinterpret  or  to 
misuse  another's  expressions  upon  such  subjects ;  and  this 
fact,  while  it  certainly  seriously  increases  the  responsibility 
of  any  one  who  feels  called  upon  to  give  public  utterance  to 
his  views  as  to  such  delicate  problems,  makes  doubtless 
only  the  more  unprofitable  too  detailed  a  controversy  over 
words  that  have  once  been  uttered.  It  is,  after  all,  the 
cause  involved  that  is  here  of  moment.  For  the  problem : 
To  what  extent  does  an  experience  of  evil  add  to  our  intel- 
lectual ability  ?  is  indeed  so  complex  as  to  make  only  too 
possible  expressions  of  opinion  that,  by  reason  of  the  diffi- 
culty of  the  subject,  may  prove  to  be  erroneous,  and  that,  by 
reason  of  the  practical  moment  of  the  issue  in  question,  may 
in  consequence  easily  cause  the  judicious  to  grieve. 

Meanwhile,  of  the  reality  of  the  issue  itself  there  can  be 
no  doubt.  The  words  rendered,  Eritis  sicut  Deus,  scientes 
bonum  et  malum,  were  felt  by  the  author  of  the  original 
tale  to  embody  a  paradoxical  truth  that,  for  us  who  come 
after  him,  has  only  grown  more  wealthy  in  its  paradoxes  ai^ 
time  has  gone  on.  As  for  the  part  later  played,  in  the  dis- 
cussion, by  Mephistopheles,  in  the  passage  just  referred  to, 
the  significance  of  these  as  of  other  utterances  of  Faust's 
tempter  lies  just  in  the  fact  that  they  contain,  in  all  their 
cruel  irony,  an  aspect  of  the  real  truth.  Moral  goodness,  as 
an  attainment,  is  doubtless  something  very  different  from 
innocence.  And  attained  goodness  is  only  won  through  a 
conflict  with  the  forces  of  evil,  which  involves  a  pretty  deep 
knowledge  of  evil.  But  knowledge  of  evil,  in  us  men  (and 
for  excellent  "psycho-physical"  reasons,  too)  frequently 
leads  to  sin,  and  very  commonly  does  so,  in  any  given  indi- 
vidual, before  it  actually  leads  the  individual  himself  to  the 
possible  goodness  that  lies  for  him  beyond  and  above  this 


THE  KNOWLEDGE  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL.    91 

knowledge  of  evil.  Therefore,  on  the  way  that  leads  the 
triumphant  towards  the  goal  of  attained  goodness,  there  will 
be  found  many  who  pause  by  the  way,  and  who  are  con- 
tent, after  their  fashion,  with  this  or  that  sort  of  knowledge 
of  evil,  and  with  the  sin  in  which,  in  their  cases,  this  knowl- 
edge has  actually  involved  them.  Among  these  numerous 
wayfarers,  moreover,  there  will  be  found  many  in  whom 
such  knowledge  is  a  very  marked  feature  of  their  whole 
mental  life.  Some  of  them,  accordingly,  will  be  very  clever 
and  ingenious  persons,  and  will  owe  much  of  their  wit  to 
their  lack  of  innocence.  As  against  the  innocent — the 
dwellers,  as  it  were,  in  Eden — these  knowing  sinners  can 
always  assert  that  there  is  something  more  advanced — more 
Godlike,  in  fact,  as  the  serpent  said — in  their  wisdom,  than 
in  the  ignorance  of  those  who  cannot  conceive  of  sin.  And 
thus  insight  and  moral  defect  will  come  to  have  that  fre- 
quent actual  association,  which  the  writer  of  the  paper  here 
referred  to  has  noticed  as  a  fact  in  the  life  of  the  world, 
and  which  is,  in  truth,  the  source  of  so  serious  a  tragedy  in 
human  life.  For  it  is  precisely  this  association  which  often 
helps  to  make  evil  so  keenly  attractive  in  the  eyes  of  the 
young  and  curious.  But  if  one  examines  more  closely,  one 
finds  that  the  paradox  of  the  serpent  is  but  one  special  case 
of  an  universal  paradox  of  all  human  consciousness.  And 
it  is  only  necessary  to  state  this  paradox  in  its  extremest 
form  to  deprive  it  of  half  its  susceptibility  to  misunder- 
standing. There  will,  of  course,  indeed,  always  remain  a 
great  number  of  perplexing  special  problems  in  this  as  in 
all  regions  of  our  life ;  but  at  least  we  shall  no  longer  be 
misled  in  our  principjes  of  judgment,  when  once  we  have 
grasped  the  deepest  source  of  the  difficulty.  The  common 
mistake,  in  dealing  with  all  such  matters,  is  the  half-truth, 
and  it  was  just  in  the  half-truth  that  the  wisdom  of  the 
original  serpent  consisted.  Even  so,  however,  to  point  out 
in  succession  now  this,  now  that  case  where  an  intellectual 


92  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

advance  results  from  some  particular  moral  deficiency,  may 
be  to  any  extent  confusing  and  disheartening.  To  discover, 
however,  a  principle  so  universal  that  it  would  determine  a 
priori  the  existence  of  many  such  paradoxical  cases  in  any 
moral  world,  even  the  best,  so  soon  as  that  world  were  con- 
ceived as  more  than  one  of  transparently  empty  innocence 
— this  is  an  undertaking  worthy  of  the  serious  moralist ; 
and,  properly  set  forth,  such  an  undertaking  can  be  in  no 
wise  either  confusing  to  the  little  ones,  or  disheartening  to 
the  earnestly-minded.  And,  after  all,  why  should  science, 
in  its  cool  regard  for  truth,  need  to  be  disheartening  when 
the  truth  happens  to  be  inspiring,  or  choose  to  be  confusing 
in  order  to  prove  itself  to  be  dispassionate. 

As  a  fact  I  find,  since  writing  the  body  of  what  follows, 
that  the  author  of  the  essay  here  in  question  actually  recog- 
nizes, in  its  universality,  precisely  that  principle  which  I  am 
about  to  expound  afresh,  and  has  elsewhere,*  in  the  already 
published  first  volume  of  his  treatise  on  ethics,  discussed  in 
a  general  and  significant  way  the  close  relation  which  exists 
between  the  ethical  worth  of  the  individual  and  the  presence 
of  evil  tendencies  and  temptations  in  his  consciousness. 
Little  or  nothing  of  what  I  here  write  will  therefore  seem 
new  to  him,  and  therefore  it  is  indeed  better  that  I  avoid 
the  controversial  tone.  But  in  the  essay  now  in  question, 
on  the  Moral  Deficiencies,  our  author  has  written  as  if  he 
had  forgotten  or  chosen  to  neglect  his  own  former  dis- 
cussion. This  his  former  discussion  itself,  moreover,  has 
just  come  into  my  own  hands,  and  the  following  essay, 
written  before  I  had  seen  the  first  volume  of  the  Einleitung 
in  die  Moralwissenschaft,  must  therefore  be  regarded  as,  on 
the  whole,  far  less  a  reply  than  an  independent  contribu- 
tion to  our  topic.  Where  what  I  shall  here  say  agrees, 

*  See  Einleitung  in  die  Moralwissenschaft,  by  Georg  Simmel.    Berlin, 
1892,  vol.  i.,  3tes  Kapitel,  on  Sittliches  Verdienst  und  Schuld. 


THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL.          93 

then,  with  our  author's  former  chapter,  in  his  published  Ein- 
leitung — the  chapter  on  Verdienst  und  Schuld — I  shall  only 
be  supplementing  his  more  recent  essay  by  the  thoughts 
presented  in  his  previous  publication.  Where  my  own 
views  run  altogether  counter  to  his,  the  contrast  may  still 
be  of  service. 

I. 

It  is  an  old  observation,  which  recent  research  only  makes 
more  impressive  and  concrete,  that  all  organic  processes  in- 
volve a  certain  balance  of  opposing  forces,  and  that,  in  par- 
ticular, there  is  in  all  of  them  such  an  union  of  conflicting 
tendencies  as  is,  for  instance,  expressed  by  saying  that  the 
phenomena  of  physical  life  involve  at  every  instant,  as  a  part 
of  themselves,  all  the  essential  phenomena  of  the  death  of 
tissues.  As  I  read,  at  the  moment,  in  the  current  journals, 
I  come  upon  two  very  recent  expressions  of  this  now  fairly 
commonplace  fact.  In  an  article  on  The  Nerve-Cell,*  by  a 
well-known  English  expert,  I  find,  in  an  argument  upon  the 
functions  of  nerve-fibers,  the  words,  "Since  the  chemical 
processes  which  accompany  death  of  living  tissue  appear  to 
be  very  similar  to  the  chemical  processes  which  accompany 
activity,  as  is  seen,  for  example,  in  the  case  of  muscle,  it  is 
very  possible,"  etc. ;  but  the  rest  of  the  argument  concerns 
us  not  here.  Meanwhile,  a  paper  in  the  Revue  Philoso- 
phique,  on  the  movements  of  lower  and  higher  organisms,t 
contains,  in  the  author's  summary  of  some  recent  discus- 
sions of  the  chemical  processes  at  the  basis  of  such  move- 
ments, the  statement,  "  Nothing  more  resembles  the  phenom- 
ena of  the  irritation  (of  living  tissues)  than  those  of  death  ; 
and  it  was  a  stroke  of  genius  in  Claude  Bernard  to  insist  as 

*  The  Nerve  Cell  Considered  an  the  Basis  of  Neurology,  by  Professor 
Schafer.  Brain,  1893,  Parts  LXI  and  LXII,  p.  159. 

t  Origine  et  Nature  du  Mouvement  Organique,  by  J.  Soury.  Revue 
Ph'loaophique  for  July,  1893;  see,  in  particular,  p.  65. 


94  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

much  as  he  did  on  the  truth  that  every  function  of  life  is  a 
function  of  organic  death  ;  that  in  every  movement  of  man 
and  of  the  animals  '  the  active  substance  of  the  muscle  is 
destroyed  and  burned,'  just  as  the  brain,  in  thinking,  is 
consumed  ;  and  in  a  word,  that  life  is  death  (La  vie  c'est  la 


Now,  here  is  mentioned  an  union  of  opposing  tendencies 
in  one  of  the  best-known  and  most-frequently  studied  of 
organic  processes.  I  need  not  for  the  moment  insist  upon 
the  true  analogy,  which  some  at  first  sight  would  think  a 
strained  one,  between  these  objective  physical  phenomena 
and  certain  others  which  are  observable  in  the  subjective 
world,  among  the  activities  of  consciousness.  Of  that  genu- 
ine analogy  I  shall  indeed  speak  in  a  moment.  But  just 
now  I  shall  confine  myself  to  the  mere  interpretation  of 
phrases.  And  here,  for  the  first,  what  it  concerns  us  to 
note  is  that  there  does  appear,  in  the  account  of  the  vital 
processes,  a  necessity  of  stating  their  nature  in  essentially 
paradoxical  terms,  and  that  yet  nobody  is  likely,  in  this 
region,  to  fall  a  prey  to  certain  apparently  easy  misunder- 
standings of  the  meaning  of  the  phrases  used.  La  vie  c'est 
la  mort  :  it  is  not  hard,  in  the  light  of  the  concrete  facts  of 
the  metabolism  of  tissues,  as  the  biologists  explain  them  to 
us,  to  understand  the  significant  half-truth,  the  apt  para- 
dox, of  such  an  expression.  But  suppose  that  some  one 
began  to  draw  conclusions  as  to  the  implication  of  these 
words  if  taken  in  too  abstract  a  sense.  Suppose  that  one 
passed  from  the  processes  to  the  products.  Suppose  that  he 
said,  "  If  the  processes  of  life  are  essentially  processes  of 
death,  surely  it  follows,  then,  that  all  live  things  are,  as 
such,  dead  things."  This  consequence  would  no  longer  be 
a  happy  paradox,  a  half-truth.  It  would  be  nonsense.  The 
process  is  an  union  of  balanced  but  opposing  tendencies. 
But  the  product  can  not  be  expressed  in  merely  negative  or 
in  indifferent  terms.  Living  involves,  yes,  as  it  were,  at 


THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL.    95 

every  step,  consists,  in  dying ;  but  life  is  utterly  different 
from  death. 

Well,  without  insisting  just  yet  on  the  reality  of  the 
analogy  of  such,  without  dwelling  on  anything  but  the 
parallelism  of  the  phrases,  suppose  that  we  do  find,  in  our 
conscious  life,  processes  whose  nature  has  to  be  expressed 
in  a  paradoxical  language  similar  to  the  one  thus  occasion- 
ally used  in  biology.  Shall  we  let  this  necessity  deceive 
us  ?  Shall  we  be  so  neglectful  of  the  complications  of 
truth  as  to  seem  to  forget  that  you  may  have  to  affirm  of  a 
process  what  would  be  nonsense  if  affirmed  of  the  product, 
or  if  so  affirmed  as  to  confuse  product  and  process  ?  To 
become  morally  wise,  for  instance  (if  moral  wisdom  involves 
an  understanding  of  moral  issues),  involves  becoming  ac- 
quainted with  impurity.  Shall  we  accordingly  say,  "All 
the  morally  wise,  as  such,  are  impure  ? "  Or,  taking  another 
vit-w  of  the  case,  shall  we  conceive  the  "moral  man  "  just 
as  a  product,  in  whom,  by  definition,  there  is  to  be  no  evil, 
and  shall  we  then  say,  "  The  moral  man  lacks  the  physical 
experience  which  gives  the  immoral  one  so  thorough  a 
comprehension  of  the  immorality  of  others  ? "  *  Surely 
such  views  are  confusions.  It  is  as  if  we  either  said,  on 
the  one  hand,  "  The  live  tissue  must  lack  all  the  essential 
characters  by  which  either  dead  or  dying  tissues  resembles 
one  another ; "  or,  on  the  contrary,  "  All  the  living  tissues, 
as  such,  are  dead."  No,  if  the  matter  is  merely  one  of  com- 
prehending phrases,  we  need  not  even  take  the  physiological 
processes  as  our  basis  for  illustrating  this  sort  of  confusion. 
If  we  are  determined  to  confuse  a  process  with  either  a 
stage  or  an  outcome  of  a  process,  regarded  as  something 
fixed  and  stationary,  we  may  as  well  turn  Eleatics  at  once. 
Surely  (for  so  in  substance  argued  Zeno),  the  flying  arrow, 


•  The  Utter,  though  not  the  former,  of  these  supposed  assertions  is  an 
actual  quotation  from  the  article  that  has  suggested  the  present  one. 
8 


90  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

whenever  it  moves,  is  somewhere.  But  somewhere  means 
a  place — yes,  one  place.  And  so,  as  of  old,  '•  the  flying 
arrow  rests "  —  rest  precisely  as  all  the  live  things  are 
dead,  and  precisely  as  the  morally  wise  man  remains  essen- 
tially impure.  For  the  process  of  wisely  conceiving  the 
moral  truth  involves  as  a  moment  the  "  psycho-physical " 
impurity  of  thinking  evil ;  and  the  process  of  the  arrow's 
flight  involves  of  necessity  that  the  arrow  should  be  some- 
where in  order  that  it  may  fly.  As  a  fact,  however,  the 
arrow  that  rests  in  its  place  does  not  move,  the  tissue  that 
merely  disintegrates  is  dead,  and  it  is  the  thought  that 
dwells  in  impurity,  that  is  impure — not  the  thought  that 
comprehends  impurity  only  to  overcome  it* 

But  I  indeed  am  not  content  thus  merely  to  dwell  upon 
the  analogies  of  phrase  involved  in  the  similarity  between 
our  current  accounts  of  biological  and  of  moral  processes. 
I  insist  upon  the  actual  and  enlightening  analogy  of  the 
two  sorts  of  processes  themselves.  In  so  far  as  the  life  of 
a  conscious  being  runs  parallel  to  the  biological  processes  of 
his  organism,  it  is  not  surprising  that  just  such  a  balancing 
of  opposing  tendencies,  just  such  a  unity  of  conflicting 
activities,  just  such  a  Heraclitean  KoXAicrn;  dp/iow'a  «  T£>V  8ia- 
fapovrajv,  as  is  everywhere  found  on  the  physiological  side, 
should  be  represented  in  our  consciousness  in  more  ways 
than  one.  For  the  just  mentioned  relation  of  the  death  and 
the  activity  of  tissues  is  but  a  single  case  of  the  presence  of 
this  union  of  opposing  tendencies  on  the  physiological  side ; 
and  more  complex  instances  of  such  union,  instances  that 
reach  the  grade  of  the  co-operation  of  antagonist  muscles  in 


*  Here  again  it  is  well  to  say  that  these  words  were  written  before  I  had 
seen  the  Einleitung  in  die  Moral wissenschaft,  where,  vol.  i,p.  268,  the  con- 
trast between  "  ruhende  Qualitdt "  and  "Prozess  "  is  admirably  applied  to  the 
very  case  now  before  us.  It  is  strange  that  the  essay  on  Moral  Deficiencies 
seems  so  much  to  have  neglected  this  aspect 


THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL.    97 

a  voluntary  movement,  are  already  pretty  obviously  repre- 
sented in  consciousness.  We  are  well  aware  that  we  give 
complex  voluntary  movements  precision  by  "  holding  our- 
selves back.1'  We  know  that  true  freedom  of  action  is 
inseparable  from  elements  of  self-restraint  and  of  self-con- 
trol. We  consciously  rejoice  in  ruling  ourselves.  We  are 
aware,  in  general,  that  our  will,  in  every  organized  form, 
involves  a  consciousness  of  opposing  tendencies — a  con- 
sciousness which  very  obviously  has  not  only  this  its  con- 
scious aspect,  but  its  whole  psycho-physical  embodiment 
and  expression.  And  from  this  point  of  view  we  get 
already  a  general  notion  of  the  true  analogy  that  connects, 
in  the  one  world  of  life,  the  most  complex  organic  functions 
— those  to  which  our  consciousness  corresponds,  with  those 
simpler  physical  processes  which  characterize  all  life,  and 
which  make  the  union  of  contrary  tendencies  so  familiar 
an  affair  throughout  the  organic  realm.  It  is  therefore 
more,  then,  than  an  analogy  of  phrases,  it  is  a  real  resem- 
blance of  type,  which  makes  the  lesson  gained  from  a  gen- 
eral survey  of  such  organic  activities  useful  when  we  turn 
to  a  study  of  the  facts  of  consciousness. 

But  this  resulting  lesson,  so  far,  is,  that  if  I  am  talking 
of  something  conceived  as  the  product  or  outcome  of  an 
inic  process— such  a  product  as  "  a  live  organism,"  or  u  a 
man,"  or  "  virtue,"  or  "  intellect " — I  must  not  be  sur- 
to  find,  in  the  process  of  which  this  product  is  not 
icrely  the  result  but  the  embodiment  (the  tvipytui,  in  Aris- 
>tle's  sense),  factors  which,  taken  by  themselves,  are  dis- 
ictly  opposed  in  their  character  to  the  positive  but  highly 
stract  definition  that  the  product,  if  conceived  merely  as 
>mething  finished  and  at  rest,  would  necessarily  possess. 
Fust  as  in  the  living  and  active  tissue  I  find,  as  an  essential 
of  its  activity,  that  going  on  which,  if  it  were  alone, 
rould  mean  death,  just  as  in  the  voluntary  movement  I 
id  that  stimulation  of  the  antagonist  muscles  going  on 


98  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

which,  if  it  were  alone,  would  mean  an  utter  defeat  of  the 
intended  movement,  just  as  every  important  nervous  stimu- 
lation seems  to  involve,  as  part  of  itself,  the  excitation  of 
processes  that  tend  to  inhibit  it,  so,  too,  I  must  expect  to 
find  in  all  forms  of  the  higher  life,  and,  in  particular,  of 
the  moral  life,  a  similar  complexity  of  structure.  And  I  do 
find,  as  a  part  of  moral  excellence,  be  it  of  whatever  grade 
you  will,  that  there  are  tendencies  present  which,  if  they 
were  alone,  would  be  the  very  opposite  and  the  destruction 
of  every  such  excellence.  And  this  must  be  the  case,  not 
because  of  the  weakness  of  man,  but  because  of  the  organic 
dignity  and  consequent  complexity  of  virtue ;  and  not  be- 
cause the  moral  world  is  a  mere  maze  of  perplexing  con- 
fusions, but  because  the  very  principle  of  every  organic  life 
is  the  combination  in  harmony  of  opposing  tendencies.* 

II. 

And  now,  in  the  next  place,  for  some  illustrations 
(drawn  directly  from  the  moral  world  itself)  of  the  way  in 
which  this  union  of  opposing  tendencies  works  in  that  re- 
gion. Then  we  shall  be  able  to  apply  our  result  to  some  of 
the  special  problems  suggested  by  our  author. 

It  is  of  the  essence  of  moral  goodness  that  positively 
good  deeds  should  be  the  result  of  what  we  call  choice — 
that  is,  that  morality  should  be  a  matter  not  of  fate,  but  of 
consciousness.  There  is  no  virtue  in  digesting  wholesome 
food  when  I  am  in  sound  health  and  have  once  eaten  it 
There  may  be  virtue  in  choosing,  against  momentary  appe- 
tite, a  wholesome  food  instead  of  a  tempting  but  pernicious 
dainty.  But  if  the  moral  processes  are  thus  processes  of 


*  Here  again  1  have  to  go  over  ground  which  the  aforesaid  3t«s  Kapitel 
of  the  first  volume  of  the  Einleitung  in  die  Moralwissenschaft  has  on 
the  whole  admirably  treated,  while  the  essay  on  the  Moral  Deficiencies 
has  strangely  neglected  the  same  considerations. 


THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL.    99 

conscious  choice,  it  follows  that  every  such  choice  involves 
a  knowing  of  something  against  which  one  chooses,  as  well 
as  s(  >mething  in  favor  of  which  one  decides.  But  that  against 
which  one  chooses  is  necessarily  a  motive,  an  interest,  a  so- 
licitation, a  temptation.  For  the  moral  choice  is  an  inner 
one ;  the  rejected  alternative  is  not  an  outer  enemy,  but  an 
internal  "  spring  of  action  "  (to  use  Dr.  Martineau's  phrase), 
If  so,  then  of  necessity  every  distinctly  moral  choice  involves 
the  previous  presence  of  a  certain  tendency  to  choose  the 
wrong.  Yes,  moral  choice  is  essentially  a  condemnatibn  of 
the  rejected  motive,  as  well  as  an  approval  of  the  accepted 
motive.  Otherwise  it  could  be  no  moral  choice.  A  being 
possessed  of  but  one  motive  could  have  no  conscience.  But 
if  this  be  so,  then  the  consciousness  of  every  moment  of 
moral  choice  involves,  also,  a  consciousness — a  confession, 
if  you  will — of  the  presence  in  the  chooser  of  that  which  he 
himself  regards  as  evil.  He  not  only  coldly  knows,  he  in- 
cludes, he  possesses,  lie  is  beset  with  some  evil  motive ;  and, 
nevertheless,  he  conquers  it.  This  is  involved  in  the  very 
formal  definition  of  a  moral  act.  You  might  as  well  try  to 
define  the  king  without  his  subjects,  or  the  master  without 
his  servant,  or  the  captor  without  his  captive  or  his  prize,  as 
to  define  a  moral  deed  without  the  presence  in  the  agent  of 
some  evil  motive.  The  case,  then,  is  here  quite  parallel  to 
UK-  case  of  the  relation  of  life  and  death  in  the  functions  of 
tin-  active  tissues.  Once  define  a  given  man  as  moral  in 
respect  of  any  one  given  deliberate  act  of  choice,  and  then, 
indeed,  you  can  no  longer  without  contradiction  conceive 
him  as  failing  to  possess  at  least  one  significant  psychical 
experience  of  evil — namely,  the  experience  of  precisely  that 
rvil  motive  which  he  has  then  and  there  deliberately  rejected 
as  evil.  Had  he  not  first  known  that  evil  motive,  and 
known  it  ;us  vrrily  his  own,  he  certainly  could  not  have 
<l«-hl>cratcly  chofwm  against  it.  Or  am  I  moral  because  I 
choose  not  to  act  on  the  motives  that  I  can  only  abstractly 


100  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

conceive,  as  possible  and  remote  temptations,  which  attract 
others  and  not  me  ?  If  so,  how  vast  my  morality !  Like 
the  moralizing  schoolmaster  in  Hegel's  Philosophy  of  His- 
tory, who  is  represented  as  warning  his  class  against  the 
ambitious  passions  of  the  great  men  of  history,  I  can  place 
my  virtues  above  those  of  Alexander,  for,  unlike  that  glory- 
seeking  man  of  blood,  I  have  no  ambitious  desire  to  con- 
quer Asia,  or  to  overthrow  Darius,  but  I  leave  all  nations  to 
fare  as  God  pleases.*  This  sort  of  virtue  is  indeed  cheap, 
and  "  moral "  men  in  this  sense  are  as  plenty  as  are  the 
weaklings ;  while  if  one  points  out  that  we  possess  such 
virtues  not  in  so  far  as  we  comprehend  life,  and  are  skilful, 
but  in  so  far  as  we  are  limited,  and  ignorant  of  life,  and 
unskilful,  I  have  no  objection  to  offer  to  such  an  argument. 
Only  the  virtues  of  Hegel's  schoolmaster  are  simply  not 
virtues  in  actu,  and  one  cannot  even  be  sure  that  they  are 
virtues  in  potentia  until  the  virtuous  schoolmaster  has 
proved  by  his  deeds  his  capacity  for  self-conquest.  Put  the 
schoolmaster  in  Alexander's  place,  and  what  will  he  do 
with  Darius  and  with  Asia  ?  Who  can  tell  ?  Nay,  he 
himself  cannot  tell,  and  that  is  just  why  he  is  here  igno- 
rant both  of  the  temptations  of  Alexander,  and  of  the  vir- 
tues that  Alexander  might  have  possessed,  but  perhaps  did 
not  possess.  Here,  then,  ignorance  conditions  not  only  the 
lack  of  temptation,  but  the  entire  absence  of  the  correspond- 
ing virtues  as  well. 

Hegel  skilfully  said,  "Die  Tugend  ist  nicht  ohne 
Kampf ;  sie  ist  vielmehr  der  hochste,  vollendete  kampf"  t 

*  Hegel,  Werke,  IX,  p.  40 :  Woraus  soglcich  folgt  dass  er,  der  Schul- 
meister,  ein  vortrefflicherer  Mensch  sey,  als  jene  (Caesar  u.  Alexander)  well 
er  solche  Leidenschaften  iricht  besasse,  und  den  Beweis  dadurch  gebe, 
dass  er  Asieii  nicht  erobere,  den  Darius,  Porus,  nicht  besiege,  sondern 
freilich  wohl  lebe,  aber  auch  leben  lasse. 

t  Logik,  Werke,  IV,  p.  63.  I  venture  to  refer  to  my  own  discussion  of 
tliis  general  topic,  and  to  my  statement  of  Hegel's  view  of  it,  in  my  Spirit 


THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL.       1Q1 

"  Virtue  is  not  without  strife,  but  is  rather  the  highest,  the 
fulfilled  strife."  But  forgetting  this  perfectly  obvious  con- 
sideration, people  often  so  ignore  the  element  of  conflict  in 
the  process,  while  they  think  only  of  the  assumed  perfec- 
tion of  the  product,  that  when  some  one  suggests,  in  the 
interest  of  the  "  intellectual  functions,"  how  an  insight 
into  life  must  involve  a  knowledge  of  evil,  people  at  once 
assume  that  the  washed-out  soul  of  the  colorless  and  inane 
person  whom  they  have  imagined  as  the  model  good  man 
cannot  possess  such  knowledge,  and  thereupon  they  lament 
the  sad  conflict  which  seems  to  result  between  the  interests 
of  virtue  and  those  of  insight  into  life.  As  a  fact,  how- 
ever, the  whole  case  stands  thus  :  The  good  man  as  such  is 
neither  an  innocent  nor  an  inane  person,  but  a  knowing,  a 
warm-blooded,  a  passionate  servant  of  the  good.  Mean- 
while, neither  virtue  nor  knowledge  exists  in  abstracto 
among  us  men.  There  exists  always  some  concrete  virtue, 
which  shows  itself  in  good  choices  in  favor  of  this  or  of 
this  good,  as  against  that  or  some  other  evil  end,  or  motive. 
And  as  to  knowing,  it  too  is  no  abstraction,  but  there  exists 
always  some  concrete  knowledge,  which  is  knowledge  of 
this  or  of  that  thing.  We  therefore,  to  be  sure,  cannot 
compare  the  virtuous  man  in  the  abstract  with  the  knowing 
man  in  the  abstract,  to  see  whether  the  two  concepts  can  be 
made  to  agree.  Doubtless  many  stupid  men,  meanwhile, 
have  some  virtues,  and  many  of  the  base  are  clever.  No- 
body, moreover,  has  all  virtues,  or  all  knowledge.  The 
only  possible  comparison  is  therefore  between  two  men  as 
to  a  particular  virtue,  either  in  exercise  or  in  potentia,  or 
between  the  same  men  as  to  the  knowledge  of  a  particular 
thing.  Well,  this  being  so,  let  it  be  a  question  of  the 
actual  and  conscious  exercise,  in  a  deliberate  and  not  in  a 

of  Modem  I'hilosophy,  p.  210,  «?.,  and  in  my  Religious  Aspect  of  Philoso- 
phy, pp.  462-469. 


102  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

merely  accidental  way,  of  a  given  virtue,  as  concretely 
applied  to  a  given  case.  Let  one  man  choose  the  positive 
exercise  of  that  virtue ;  let  another,  with  equal  deliberation, 
wilfully  reject  it.  Which  now  of  these  two  is  just  then  the 
more  knowing  as  to  the  motives  involved  in  this  virtue  ?  I 
say  that,  so  far  as  we  have  yet  defined  the  case,  there  is  no 
difference  in  intellectual  capacity  denned  as  between  the 
two.  Both  know  the  good  and  the  ill  involved.  For 
neither  could  consciously  choose  unless  he  in  some  measure 
knew  both  the  good  and  the  ill.  The  good  man  knows 
the  ill,  and  is  aware  of  the  temptation  to  do  it ;  otherwise 
his  "  virtuous  "  act  would  be  a  matter  of  blind  health,  like 
his  digestion,  or  of  mere  lack  of  interest,  like  his  present 
avoidance  of  any  wicked  ambition  to  conquer  Asia.  He 
knows  the  rejected  ill,  he  is  tempted,  and  he  deliberately 
resists  and  overcomes  the  temptation  (whether  with  or 
without  free  will  I  decide  not  here).  The  other  also  knows, 
but  chooses  the  ill.  Which  is  so  far  the  more  knowing  ? 
The  virtuous  man  can  surely  say,  "  Show  me  thy  knowl- 
edge without  thy  virtue,  and  I  will  show  thee  my  knowl- 
edge by  my  virtue.  For  by  knowing  the  ill  and  the  good 
it  is  that  I  choose  the  good  with  open  eyes."  Of  the  later 
knowledge  which  for  the  sinner  alone,  not  for  the  good 
man,  results  from  the  consequences  of  this  sin,  I  shall 
speak  hereafter. 

Doubtless  one  may  indeed  still  insist  that,  unless  by  the 
actual  assertion  of  a  freedom  of  indeterminate  choice,  the 
foregoing  precise  equality  of  knowledge  between  these  two 
men  cannot  in  the  end  be  maintained.  Well,  be  it  so.  I 
am,  as  I  have  said,  not  here  arguing  the  free-will  issue. 
Admit,  if  you  please,  that  there  must  be  a  difference  of 
motive  between  the  two,  and  therefore  a  difference  of 
knowledge :  the  question  will  then  once  more  arise,  Which 
of  them  is,  at  the  moment  of  choice,  the  more  knowing  ? 
For  the  same  reasons  as  before,  both  of  them  alike  must  at 


THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL.   U»3 

least  in  some  genuine  measure  know  both  of  the  motives 
between  which  they  choose.  Else  there  is  mere  blind 
prevalence  of  interest  without  any  clear  deliberation. 
Shall  one  say,  as  to  the  different  degrees  of  knowledge 
now  subsisting,  It  is  the  chooser  of  the  good  who  knows 
not  the  full  allurements  of  the  other's  temptation  ?  Or 
shall  one  say,  It  is  the  sinner  who  is  blind  to  those  mani- 
fold excellencies  whose  presence  to  consciousness  deter- 
mines the  good  man's  choice  ?  Here,  if  anything,  the 
chances  are  largely  in  favor  of  the  greater  knowledge  of 
the  virtuous  chooser,  since  in  general  strong  temptations 
are  comparatively  elemental,  while  the  reasons  in  favor  of 
goodness  are  in  nature  usually  complex  and  abstract.  A 
mere  boy  can  have  a  full  sense  of  many  temptations  to 
vice ;  it  takes  reflection  to  see  fully  all  the  reasons  why 
vice  is  intolerable.  But  herewith,  as  soon  as  one  admits 
differences  of  knowledge,  as  between  these  two,  one  enters 
afresh  the  realm  of  the  indeterminate.  My  object  was  only 
to  show  that  in  order  to  have  the  same  choice  presented,  in 
its  essential  features,  to  two  agents,  one  virtuous,  one  vicious 
in  his  decision,  it  is  necessary  to  have  essentially  the  same 
lotives,  and  so  the  same  elements  of  knowledge  present  in 
both  cases.  What  further  differences  of  knowledge  there 
be  is  indeed  a  matter  of  accident ;  but  the  chances  are 
at  least  even  that  the  good  chooser  is  more  knowing  than 
the  sinner. 

But  if  this  is  so  whenever  an  individual  case  of  compari- 
is  taken  up,  how  far,  then,  extends  the  possible  growth, 
in  insight  into  life,  of  those  agents  who  grow  in  active  vir- 
tue; and  how  does  their  possible  collective  insight  con- 
cerning mere  temptations  compare  with  that  of  the  sinners  ? 
[f  every  active  virtue  involves  a  knowledge  of  evil  in  order 
to  be  a  conquest  over  evil — the  presence  of  temptation  in 
order  that  the  active  virtue  maybe  a  victory  over  tern  pla- 
in— then  what  insight  into  life  is  there  that  will  not  some- 


104  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

where  form  part  of  the  insight,  and  so  of  the  virtue,  of  some 
virtuous  agent  ?  No,  it  would  seem  that  there  is  no  insight 
into  life  that  is  alien  from  every  possible  virtue,  and  that 
no  sinner  can  say  to  all  the  good,  "  I  comprehend  tempta- 
tions that  no  one  of  all  of  you  can  possibly  understand." 
For  had  the  sinner  not  only  possessed  his  temptation,  but 
won  the  victory  over  it,  he  would  now  be,  with  reference 
to  that  temptation  alone,  surely  no  less  than  he  is,  in  insight 
or  in  being,  and  he  would  then  have  stood  among  the 
virtuous,  where  even  now  there  may  well  stand  some  one 
who  has  been  tempted  in  all  points  as  he  was,  but  who  is, 
in  this  matter,  without  sin.  I  still  postpone,  to  be  sure,  a 
discussion  of  the  knowledge  that  the  sinner  gets  from  the 
consequences  of  his  sin — from  the  experiences  that  follow 
upon  it. 

This  view  of  the  nature  of  virtue  is,  however,  indeed  ap- 
parently open  to  one  or  two  more  or  less  plausible  objec- 
tions, which  it  may  be  well  still  to  mention. 

"  If  this  view  of  virtue  is  right,"  some  imaginary  objector 
may  say,  "then  it  must  follow  that  a  good  man  is  good 
merely  in  proportion  to  the  number  and  the  gravity  of  his 
resisted  temptations.  But  if  so,  then  a  man  who  should  be 
constantly  tempted  to  murder  his  mother,  to  steal  church 
property,  to  be  a  cannibal,  and  to  kidnap  and  eat  children, 
and  who  nobly  resisted  all  these  temptations,  would  be  a 
more  virtuous  man  than  one  who  was  never  thus  tempted, 
but  who  lived  without  friction  the  devoted  life  of  a  phi- 
lanthropist, and  of  a  public  servant,  always  loyal  and  chari- 
table of  heart.  As  this  result  is  absurd,  it  follows  that 
virtue  indeed  implies,  as  the  author  of  the  essay  here  in 
question  asserts,  a  certain  ignorance  of  evil  motives." 

This  objection  is  obvious,  but  trivial.  No  one  would  be 
deceived  by  the  parallel  assertion  in  case  of  the  organic 
processes  before  referred  to.  Life  involves  disintegration 
of  tissue,  and  so  constant  death,  always  counteracted,  indeed, 


THE   KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOOD  AND   EVIL.        1Q5 

by  the  processes  of  tissue-building.  The  more  life,  and  the 
more  activity  of  tissue — the  more  disintegration,  and  the 
more  building  up.  And  so,  for  instance,  in  a  warm-blooded 
animal,  a  more  rapid  dying  process  goes  on  than  in  a  cold- 
blooded animal.  It  does  not  follow  that,  in  a  given  organ- 
ism, the  life  would  grow  in  general  vigor  if  disintegrating 
processes  at  random  were  set  up,  and  were  then  just  counter- 
acted, in  the  struggles  of  a  pathological  condition,  by  the 
upbuilding  processes  that  preserved  the  life.  The  death- 
process  is  not  alien  from  my  physical  life,  but  is  a  part  of  it. 
The  more  active  the  life  that  I  get,  the  more  dying  will  be 
going  on  in  my  tissues.  But  the  simple  converse  of  this 
proposition  very  surely  does  not  follow.  I  do  not  neces- 
sarily produce  more  life  by  introducing  more  death  into 
my  tissues.  What  is  clear  is,  that  if  some  disintegrating 
disease  is  present  in  my  tissues,  then  I  get  life,  if  at  all,  by 
conquering  this  pathological  disintegration.  But  without 
just  that  form  of  disintegration,  I  might,  indeed,  have  a 
richer  life. 

Just  so  it  is  too  with  the  process  of  virtue.  Any  actively 
virtuous  man  can  say,  at  the  moments  of  deliberate  exercise 
of  virtue,  "  My  virtue  involves  as  one  of  its  elements  temp- 
tation to  evil.  Hence  in  doing  good  I  know  evil."  Igno- 
rance of  a  given  evil  may  be  per  accidens  a  condition  of  a 
iven  virtue,  but  every  active  virtue  involves  some  knowl- 
of  evil.  On  the  other  hand  no  sinner  can  say,  "  My 
inowledge  of  temptation  depends  upon  my  viciousness,  and 
if  I  had  been  good  at  the  moment  of  choice  in  respect  of  the 
deeds  wherein  now  I  am  evil,  I  should  ipso  facto  have 
diminished  my  intelligence,  in  acquiring  my  virtues,  since 
I  should  then  have  failed  to  know  these  temptations,"  For 
here  the  answer  is  simply :  You  could  have  known  these 
temptations  just  as  truly  if  you  had  resisted  them.  You 
would  then  have  no  less  insight  as  to  temptation,  but  much 
more  virtue  as  to  life.  But  these  things  being  granted,  it 


1U6  STUDIES  OF   GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

may  well  be  that  some  virtues  are  better  worth  knowing 
than  other  virtues,  just  as  some  life  is  more  vigorous  than 
other  life  ;  so  that  virtues  whose  knowledge  involves  the 
knowing  and  resisting  of  pathological  temptations  may 
be  far  less  interesting,  both  to  the  afflicted  sufferer  from 
the  pathological  enemy,  and  to  the  lover  of  conscious  or 
of  moral  life  in  general,  than  are  other  active  virtues, 
based  upon  the  conquest  over  more  normal  temptations 
Meanwhile,  there  can  be  no  doubt  whatever  of  the  moral 
excellence  of  the  man  who,  being  burdened  with  a  distinctly 
pathological  temptation,  nobly  resists  it,  just  as  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  he  loses  no  intellectual  skill  or  insight,  but 
rather  cultivates  both,  by  resisting  his  temptation.  But 
since,  unfortunately,  the  burdened  man  as  much  lacks 
knowledge  of  the  normal  life  as  the  normal  man  fails  to 
comprehend  the  depths  of  abnormality,  the  real  problem 
here  is,  Which  of  these  two  sorts  of  knowledge  of  life  is 
most  worth  having  ?  And  this  question  is  in  no  respect 
any  longer  a  question  of  the  relative  value  for  the  intellect 
of  virtue  and  of  vice,  but  it  is  a  question  of  the  relative 
value  for  the  intellect  of  two  sorts  of  knowledge,  whereof 
one  is  normal,  the  other  unhealthy,  but  whereof  both  alike 
may  involve  either  virtue  if  a  temptation  is  known  and 
conquered,  or  vice,  if  the  temptation  is  known  and  pre- 
ferred. 

For  the  rest,  the  kindly  and  public-spirited  philanthropist 
of  our  example  is  indeed  as  virtuous  as  his  burdened,  but  still 
triumphant  brother,  only  in  case  the  philanthropist  really 
struggles  as  seriously  as  the  latter  with  his  own  much  more 
elevated,  but  none  the  less  genuine  moral  problems  and 
temptations.  And  the  moral  order  actually  demands  of  him 
that  he  shall  do  so.  He  has  more  talents ;  from  him,  then, 
more  moral  life  is  required.  He  may  think  that  he  finds  in 
himself  only  kindliness;  but  if  he  looks  sharply  as  he  goes, 
he  will  erelong  find  in  himself  sloth,  or  pride,  or  self -com- 


THE  KNOWLEDGE  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL.        1Q7 

placency,  uot  to  speak  of  a  horde  of  more  elemental  if  still 
normal  passions.  If  he  contends  with  these  and  with  their 
outcome,  he  will  get  as  rich  an  experience  of  the  evils  of  his 
own  world  as  his  weaker  brother  gets  of  the  evils  of  his. 
In  general,  then,  it  is  here  not  our  virtue  that  is  responsible 
for  our  ignorance,  but  rather  our  inevitable  ignorance  of 
life  that  limits  the  scope  of  our  virtues.  The  healthy  man 
cannot  have  the  virtues  of  the  sick  man,  nor  the  patholog- 
ically burdened  soul  the  sort  of  goodness  that  distinguishes 
the  genius  in  holy  living ;  not,  however,  because  virtue 
means  ignorance  of  life,  but  because  the  naturally  limited 
insight  into  life  which  each  man  possesses  limits  his  possible 
virtues.  But  within  his  limits,  the  more  any  given  man 
knows  of  life  the  more  chance  he  has  to  be  virtuous,  if  he 
chooses  to  be  so. 

Another  objection,  and  a  common  one,  to  the  foregoing 
view  of  virtue  has  reference  to  the  influence  of  training 
upon  the  exercise  of  active  virtues.  The  virtuous  man  of 
Aristotle's  original  definition  is  such  not  merely  by  reason 
of  his  acts,  but  by  reason  of  the  attained  character  that,  in 
the  long  run,  he  earns  by  his  acts.  The  habitual  and  suc- 
cessful resistance  of  any  given  type  of  temptations  involves. 
of  necessity,  the  gradual  elimination  of  at  least  those  special 
temptations.  The  cultivation  of  active  virtues  leads  towards 
a  virtuous  perfection  of  disposition  in  which  just  these 
active  virtues  no  longer  have  to  be  cultivated.  In  so  far 
it  is  indeed  true  that  the  aim  of  the  good  man  is  to  acquire 
an  ignorance  of  certain  evils  which  he  now  knows  only  too 
well.  If  he  actively  exercises  virtue  only  in  the  presence 
of  an  actual  knowledge  of  evil  motives  present  in  himself, 
he  aims,  nevertheless,  at  the  ultimate  attainment  of  a  state 
in  which  these  evil  motives  will  no  longer  have  meaning 
for  him.  In  this  fashion,  then,  it  would  seem  that  the 
attainment  of  holiness  is,  in  some  sense,  the  attainment  of 
ignorance  ;  and  so  once  more  the  argument  of  our  author 


108  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

would  receive  a  certain  confirmation,  and  the  price  of  pos- 
sessing certain  "intellectual  functions"  would  be  the  re- 
taining of  certain  "  moral  deficiencies." 

Once  more,  however,  the  general  biological  analogies 
will  aid  us  in  comprehending  the  true  sense  of  the  facts 
here  brought  before  us.  The  question  is  now  the  familiar 
one  as  to  the  relation  of  habit  and  consciousness.*  I  am  not 
conscious  of  the  detailed  execution  of  what  is  so  completely 
an  habitual  function  of  my  organism  that  I  accomplish 
this  function  swiftly  and  without  hesitancy.  I  am  con- 
scious in  general  only  of  my  relatively  hesitant  functions 
in  so  far  as  they  are  hesitant.  This,  again,  is  a  psychological 
commonplace.  On  the  other  hand,  the  more  by  practice  I 
exercise  my  consciousness  of  a  given  process,  and  so  perfect 
any  now  hesitant  function,  the  more  I  tend  to  bring  its 
execution  below  the  level  of  my  consciousness.  In  this 
sense,  to  be  sure,  we  find  another  paradox — and  one  of  a 
most  familiar  and  characteristic  sort — in  the  life  of  the 
highest  organisms.  Consciousness,  namely,  is  working,  as 
it  were,  on  all  levels,  in  the  direction  of  its  own  extinction, 
in  so  far  as  it  is  a  consciousness  of  just  this  unfamiliar  ob- 
ject ;  very  much  as  the  living  tissues  are  constantly  busy 
in  compassing  their  own  death,  precisely  in  so  far  as  they 
are  tissues  with  just  this  energy  becoming  free  in  their  pro- 
cesses. I  am  conscious  of  a  given  function,  and  so  of  the 
objects  to  which  this  function  is  related,  because  the  func- 
tion is  relatively  novel,  is  imperfectly  learned,  is  not  thor- 
oughly habitual.  But  it  is  precisely  this  unfamiliarity  of  the 
function  and  of  its  object  that  is  unsatisfactory  to  me.  I 
try  to  perfect  my  mastery  over  this  function  and  to  render 
its  objects  perfectly  familiar.  I  train  the  function  until  it 
is  smooth-running,  facile,  free  from  hesitancy,  and  so  until 

*  In  thjs  aspect  this  question  is  interestingly  discussed  in  the  Einleitung 
in  die  Moralwissenschaft,  vol.  i,  p.  227  et  aeq. 


THE  KNOWLEDGE  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL.        109 

it  is  no  longer  an  object  of  consciousness.  I  now  ignore 
both  the  function  and  its  familiar  objects.  This  I  am  every- 
where tending  to  do,  precisely  in  so  far  as  I  engage  in  any 
special  business  of  consciousness.  I  am  conscious  of  the 
syntax  of  a  foreign  tongue  while  I  am  learning  that 
tongue  ;  but  the  object  of  my  conscious  toil  is  to  learn  the 
language  so  well  that  I  shall  forget  its  syntax  and  speak  its 
sentences  with  absolutely  unreflective  fluency. 

But  now,  on  the  other  hand,  although  consciousness  thus, 
as  it  were,  aims  to  compass,  on  every  stage,  and  in  each  of 
its  special  functions,  its  own  extinction,  still,  all  of  us  who 
love  insight  talk  of  consciousness  as  being  an  end  in  itself, 
and  are  conscious  that  we  want  not  less,  but  more  of  it. 
Our  general  aim  as  conscious  beings  is  opposed,  in  this 
paradoxical  way,  to  each  and  every  one  of  the  special  aims 
of  our  own  consciousness,  in  so  far  as  the  latter  is  a  pro- 
cess whereby  the  unfamiliar  is  rendered  familiar,  and  is  so 
gradually  brought  below  the  level  of  consciousness,  while 
our  general  aim  as  conscious  beings  is  not  to  get  less,  but 
more,  concrete  insight,  and  so  more  consciousness. 

Here  again,  La  vie  c'est  la  mort.  "  Die  to  live  "  is  a 
philosophical  motto  that  Professor  Edward  Caird  loves  to 
repeat  in  his  writings.  It  may  be  important  to  vary  the 
phrase,  as,  with  the  aid  of  M.  Soury,  I  have  here  tried  to  do. 
But  Professor  Caird  is  unquestionably  right  as  to  the  sub- 
stance of  the  thing.  Consciousness,  like  living  tissue,  loves 
to  feed  on  its  own  process  of  endless  self-extinction.  And 
tht-  way  in  which  it  thus  feeds  is  obvious  enough.  When  I 
have  no  longer  to  be  conscious  of  the  syntax  of  the  new  lan- 
guage, I  shall  have  acquired  a  new  organic  power — namely, 
th<-  power  to  be  conscious  of  the  relatively  new  and  unfa- 
miliar things  that  I  shall  want  to  say  in  that  language.  The 
more  numerous  the  familiar  and  so  unconscious  habits  that  I 
have  come  to  possess,  the  more  capacity  I  have  acquired  to 
adjust  myself  to  complex  novel  situations,  and  so  to  have,  in 


HO  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

general,  more  consciousness.  As  for  the  paradox  of  the 
whole  situation,  it  is  also  a  case  of  the  general  paradox  of 
the  will,  as  noted  by  Schopenhauer.  The  will  wants  to  live. 
But  life  means  specific  desires,  and  each  specific  desire  long- 
ing, as  it  does,  for  the  possession  of  its  object,  really  longs  for 
the  quenching  of  its  restless  fires  in  the  dark  Lethe  of  a  ful- 
fillment that  means  its  extinction  as  this  desire.  The  will, 
then,  in  longing  for  life,  longs  for  that  which  in  every  con- 
crete manifestation,  as  this  specific  desire,  it  longs  to  see  ex- 
tinguished. Schopenhauer's  paradox  is  but  the  expression, 
in  conscious  terms,  of  the  essence  of  all  those  organic  pro- 
cesses to  which  our  consciousness  runs  parallel,  and  of 
which  it  is  a  very  inadequate  expression.  As  for  Schopen- 
hauer's pessimistic  comment  on  this  essential  restlessness  of 
the  inner  world,  the  discussion  of  that  belongs  elsewhere. 
Restlessness  does  not,  as  a  fact,  mean  misery,  and  a  wise  joy 
in  the  genuine  paradoxes  of  life  is  of  the  essence  of  the 
highest  reason. 

There  is,  then,  nothing  peculiar  about  the  problem  in- 
volved in  the  case  of  the  growth  of  the  virtuous  man 
towards  a  perfection  wherein  he  ceases  to  be  conscious, 
both  of  his  former  defects,  and  of  the  active  vii'tues  whereby 
he  overcame  these  defects.  Above  all,  the  problem  is  in  no 
wise  one  of  an  opposition  between  "  moral  deficiencies " 
and  "  intellectual  functions."  Such  as  it  is,  the  paradox  ap- 
plies equally,  and  for  the  same  reasons,  to  the  intellectual 
and  to  the  moral  functions.  The  one  sort  has  here  no  ad- 
vantage over  the  other.  The  intellectual  skill  involved  in 
any  stage  of  our  human  consciousness,  in  aiming  at  its  own 
perfection  in  the  form  of  the  acquisition  of  finished,  ha- 
bitual, intelligent  functions,  aims  at  what,  as  a  fact,  when 
attained,  will  involve  its  own  extinction  as  this  particular 
conscious  activity.  Just  so,  any  growing  and  active  virtue 
aims  at  its  own  extinction,  as  this  particular  virtue,  by 
means  of  the  establishment  of  virtuous  habits  that  will 


THE  KNOWLEDGE  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL.   m 

render  the  exercise  of  this  conscious  virtue  no  longer  neces- 
sary or  even  possible.  But  virtue  thus  no  more  aims  at  its 
own  extinction  in  general  than  intellectual  skill  aims  at  its 
own  general  abolition,  or  than  Schopenhauer's  will,  in 
longing  for  fulfillment,  ceases  in  general  the  desire  to  live. 
This  must  pass — this  desire — this  stage  of  growing  intellect 
or  goodness ;  but  there  is  more  that  is  desirable,  there  is 
more  virtue,  just  as  there  is  more  wit,  beyond.  This 
is  the  universal  rule  of  conscious  life.  Die  Leidenschaft 
flieht,  die  Liebe  muss  bleiben.  When  I  have  so  well  learned 
this  virtue  as  no  longer  consciously  to  possess  it,  but  to  be 
possessed  by  it  as  by  a  mere  instinct,  well,  then,  indeed  my 
active  moral  goodness  will  indeed  cease  as  to  this  matter ; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  I  shall  consciously  be  able  to  pos- 
sess far  more,  and  more  complex,  active  virtues,  than  ever, 
for  I  shall  have  more  powers,  and  so  be  able  to  undertake 
harder  tasks,  to  go  on  new  quests,  and  to  fight  stronger 
moral  enemies.  When  I  shall  have  mastered  my  present 
intellectual  puzzles,  and  accordingly  shall  have  forgotten 
their  details  in  the  possession  of  unhesitating  and  uncon- 
scious functions,  I  shall  then  be  able  to  possess  not  less  but 
more  consciousness ;  for  I  shall  have  more  unconscious  func- 
tions upon  which  to  build  new  insights. 

The  parallelism  of  virtue  and  of  intellect  in  respect  of 
the  "deficiencies"  thus  involved  in  progress  is  here  perfect. 
Whatever  happens  to  the  one  happens  to  the  other. 

niing  is  based  upon  forgetting,  conscious  power  upon 
uiK-onscious  habit,  the  new  life  upon  the  extinction  of  the 
immediate  presence  of  the  old.  "Moral  deficiency,"  if  re- 
garded as  a  lower  state  in  a  progressive  growth,  involves 
"intellectual  functions "  only  in  the  same  sense  as  that  in 
which  intellectual  deficiency  itself  involves  such  present 
intellectual  functions. 

It  is,  then,  one  sign  of  intellectual  power,  just  as  it  is  one 
sign  of  moral  power,  to  have  forgotten,  as  well  as  to  have 
0 


112  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

remembered,  many  things.  Such  "  deficiencies  "  are  neces- 
sary moments  of  our  human  perfection.  To  a  vain  young 
man,  full  of  the  learning  freshly  acquired  at  school,  the  old 
and  erudite  scholar  may  often  justly  say,  "  Yes,  you  indeed 
have  many  things  in  mind  that  I  now  ignore  ;  but  see,  I 
have  myself  forgotten  far  more  than  you  ever  knew." 
Even  so,  a  persistent  sinner,  vaunting  his  present  knowl- 
edge of  temptation  as  against  the  state  of  the  virtuous  man 
who  has  outgrown  and  learned  to  ignore  the  movings  that 
are  still  clearly  present  to  the  consciousness  of  the  sinner, 
may  say,  "  I  know  life ;  for  I  know  these  temptations,  and 
you  are  no  longer  aware  of  them."  But  a  by-stander, 
considering  the  life  of  the  virtuous  man,  and  seeing  in  him 
the  hero  of  many  past  conflicts,  may  retort,  "  Ay,  but  he 
has  forgotten,  because  he  has  transcended,  more  temptations 
than  you  ever  knew."  Which  "  deficiency  "  is  the  prefer- 
able one  ? 

To  sum  up,  then  :  The  knowledge  and  presence  of  evil 
form,  in  very  manifold  and  complex  ways,  a  moment  in  the 
consciousness  and  in  the  life  of  goodness.  And  this  must 
be  so.  It  is  no  confusing  chance  puzzle  of  the  moral  world  ; 
it  is  a  necessary  result  of  the  very  essence  of  all  life,  which 
is  everywhere  an  union  of  opposing  elements.  The  knowl- 
edge of  this  fact  is  not  disheartening,  but  inspiring ;  since  all 
the  seriousness  of  the  moral  world  depends  upon  it.  As  to 
the  relation  of  "  deficiencies  "  and  "  functions,"  so  far  as  we 
have  yet  seen,  the  close  parallelism  of  the  intellectual  and 
moral  processes,  as  well  as  their  intimate  interdependence, 
taken  together  with  the  general  nature  of  life  just  insisted 
upon,  renders  this  relation  extremely,  and  yet  very  intelli- 
gibly, intimate  on  both  sides.  First,  in  both  the  intellectual 
and  the  moral  life,  every  "  function,"  of  necessity,  depends, 
in  the  lives  of  us  human  individuals,  upon  a  corresponding 
"  deficiency."  We  think  in  order  to  grow  wiser,  and  there- 
fore all  our  thinking  is  due  to  relative  ignorance.  We 


THE   KNOWLEDGE  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL.        H3 

choose  the  right  in  order  to  avoid  the  tempting  wrong ;  and 
therefore  all  moral  functions  depend  upon  present  moral 
imperfections.  Meanwhile,  as  to  the  cross-relation  of  moral 
deficiency  and  intellectual  function,  the  rule  holds  that, 
since  active  goodness  involves  knowledge  of  temptation,  the 
morally  deficient  have  herein  no  essential  intellectual  ad- 
vantage over  the  doers  of  good.  As  to  the  ignorance  or  in- 
tellectual deficiency  of  the  being  higher  in  the  scale  of  life 
as  against  the  being  lower  in  the  scale  and  burdened  with 
temptations  unknown  to  the  higher  being,  it  here  follows 
(1)  that  the  "  deficiency  "  of  knowledge  in  question  is  shared 
by  both  beings,  in  so  far  as  neither  fully  understands 
the  other ;  (2)  that  in  neither  case  does  this  deficiency  of 
knowledge  as  to  the  other  being,  or  possession  of  knowledge 
as  to  one's  own  moral  office  and  temptations,  determine  by 
itself  either  any  moral  excellence  or  any  moral  defect,  since 
either  of  the  two  beings  is  doing  active  moral  work  not  in 
so  far  as  he  is  by  nature  high  or  low  in  the  scale,  but  in  so 
far  as  he  rightly  deals  with  his  own  temptations.  We  call 
the  higher  being  more  virtuous,  when  he  does  well,  not  be- 
cause, being  ignorant  of  baser  temptations,  he  fails  to  resist 
them,  but  because  his  virtues,  when  once  they  exist,  seem  to 
us  as  a  part  of  a  normal  and  more  finished  life,  better  worth 
knowing  than  his  fellows'.  As  to  moral  progress,  that  does 
indeed  involve  a  transcending,  and  so  a  forgetting,  of  ear- 
lier and  simpler  virtues ;  but  here  moral  progress  is  simply 
parallel  to  all  intellectual  progress. 

In  general,  then,  intellectual  functions  seem  to  involve 
moral  deficiencies  in  precisely  the  same  sense  as  that  in  which 
MM  iral  functions  themselves  involve  moral  deficiencies,  and 
as  that  in  which  intellectual  functions  also  involve  intellec- 
tual deficiencies,  every  function  in  our  life  involving  the 
presence  of  its  own  antagonist,  and  being  successful  in  so 
far  as  its  antagonist  comes  to  form  an  organic  moment  in  its 
own  process,  instead  of  being  it  its  turn  the  triumphant  and 


114  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND   EVIL. 

absorbing  factor.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  does  not  follow 
that  you  can  produce  a  given  function,  intellectual  or  moral, 
by  simply  introducing  the  corresponding  antagonist  or  de- 
ficiency into  a  given  organic  process.  All  active  virtue  im- 
plies temptation  ;  but  it  does  not  thence  follow  that  by  in- 
creasing temptation  you  increase  virtue,  or  that  you  remain 
virtuous  by  nursing  your  temptation  in  order  to  resist  it. 
Change  and  progress  play  the  same  part  here  that  they  do 
elsewhere  in  the  great  drama  of  life.  And  if  living  is  con- 
stant dying,  it  does  not  follow  that  the  more  death  there 
is  the  more  life  there  will  be. 

in. 

So  much  for  the  main  principles  involved  in  our  present 
issue.  But  now  let  the  question  be  no  longer  of  principles, 
but  of  cases.  Moral  deficiency  shall  be  essentially  involved 
in  certain  intellectual  functions,  or  shall  determine  the  lat- 
ter. When  ? — First,  for  so  it  may  appear,  whenever  the 
comprehension  of  certain  forms  of  evil  itself  involves  such 
a  participation  in  the  evil  as  amounts  to  sin.  But  when 
does  this  take  place  ?  "  The  task  of  understanding,"  so  one 
answers,  "  certain  elementary  passions  of  the  human  soul  is 
very  difficult  from  the  height  of  official  station,  as  well  as 
in  the  normal  and  correct  life  led  by  many  scholars  "  ;  and 
so  "  undeniably  this  is  a  point  in  which  a  theoretical  knowl- 
edge gains  depth  from  an  experience  of  comparative  im- 
morality, either  present  or  past."  * 

In  judging  of  such  assertions  one's  first  reply  is,  Distin- 
guo.  The  "  elementary  passions "  of  the  human  soul  are 
indeed  the  most  common  source  of  sin ;  but  they  are  not 
themselves  sins  in  so  far  as  they  are  elementary  passions, 
but  in  so  far  as,  in  a  given  context  of  life,  they  are  persist- 
ently preferred,  despite  the  fact  that  they  prove  to  be  in- 

*  These  quotations  are,  as  before,  from  our  author's  cited  article. 


THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL.       115 

capable  of  organization,  or  destructive  of  existent  rational 
good  order.  They  are  evil,  in  other  words,  in  so  far  as  they 
are  anarchical,  fighting  against  an  already  established  or- 
ganism, and  not  in  so  far  as  they  are  "  elementary."  It  is 
in  a  context  that  they  become  temptations ;  and  the  sinful- 
ness  of  an  "elementary  passion  "  always  depends  on  its  re- 
lations to  the  other  interests  of  life.  It  is  as  related  to  such 
a  context  that  a  virtuous  man  finds  what  would  be  an 
innocent  accident  of  his  organization  a  solicitation  to  evil. 
Experience  of  passion,  of  the  "  elementary  "  in  life,  is  there- 
fore as  such  never  a  sin.  The  fault  of  a  man  is  not  that  he 
has  elementary  passions,  but  that  he  cannot  make  out  what 
to  do  with  them,  or  do  it  when  he  has  made  it  out 

In  saying  this  I  speak  simply  the  voice  of  the  wholesome 
consciousness,  of  the  Greek  as  of  the  modern  man,  as 
against  any  merely  superstitious  asceticism  which  con- 
demns some  natural  impulses  as  essentially  diabolical.  The 
wise  man  does  not  regret  the  elementary  impulses  of  his 
temperament  as  such,  whatever  these  impulses  may  be. 
What  he  does  regret  is  that  they  are  so  ill  reduced  to  order, 
so  poorly  trained  to  an  objectively  significant  service. 
Even  the  "  pathological  temptations  "  before  referred  to  are 
pathological  not  by  reason  of  the  elementary  impulses  in- 
volved, but  by  reason  of  the  union  of  such  impulses  into 
complex  groups  of  motives  hostile  to  the  general  peace  of  so- 
ciety, and  to  the  whole  rational  system  of  a  man's  inner  life. 

It  is  not  needful  to  waste  here  many  words  over  this 
matter,  which  has  been  endlessly  discussed.  Hatred  is  a 
fairly  "  elementary  "  passion.  Shall  one  call  it  essentially 
a  bad  "spring  of  action"  because  it  is  necessarily  "mali- 
cious "  ?  On  the  contrary,  if  we  find  superstitious  men  in 
the  world  who  let  cobras  multiply,  because  of  a  superstitious 
kindliness,  we  shall  wish  that  these  men  had  more  hatred 
of  snakes,  as  well  as  less  superstition.  All  depends  upon 
where  and  when  and  what  you  hate — in  other  words,  upon 


116  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

the  context  of  your  passion.  If  hatred  in  battle  makes 
given  soldiers  fight  better  against  the  enemies  of  their 
country,  then  surely,  if  patriotism  is  a  virtue,  this  virtue 
may  demand,  for  these  men,  the  cultivation  of  precisely 
such  hatred.  For  the  rest,  just  those  passions  of  humanity 
which,  under  certain  conditions,  appear  as  the  grossest,  the 
fiercest,  the  basest,  are  notoriously  the  passions  upon  whose 
organized  cultivation,  and  upon  whose  subtle  influence, 
when  once  they  are  cultivated,  the  whole  social  structure 
and  its  most  sacred  relations  depend. 

It  would  be  the  saddest  of  cant,  then,  to  say  that  a  good 
man,  as  such,  can  have  no  experiences  of  the  truly  "  ele- 
mentary passions  " — even  the  most  elementary  and  vigor- 
ous. The  fact  that  many  moralists  are  and  have  been 
bloodless  creatures,  who  have  written  about  life  without 
themselves  possessing  any  temperament  to  speak  of,  is  a 
lamentable  historical  accident,  due  in  no  wise  to  the  nature 
of  philosophy,  but  rather  to  those  economic  conditions  of 
the  thinker's  profession,  which  have  driven  many  persons  to 
turn  would-be  philosophers,  because  they  have  failed  in 
other  walks  of  life  to  prove  themselves  capable  men.  With 
the  author  who  has  inspired  this  paper  I  regret  this  acci- 
dental ill-fortune  of  philosophy.  The  philosophical  thinker, 
the  moralist  above  all,  should  first  be  a  man  of  experience 
in  a  wide  range  of  elementary  human  life.  And  the  great 
heroes  of  ethical  speculation  (yes,  even  a  man  of  the  gentle- 
ness of  a  Kant)  are  never  without  indications  in  their  works 
that  they  have  really  and  deeply  experienced  at  least  some 
part  of  our  human  nature.  But  now  this  does  not  mean  that 
the  thinker  needs  to  be  a  sinner  above  other  men  in  order 
to  be  wise.  Elements  are  one  thing.  The  organization  of 
life  is  another.  It  is  not  necessary  to  experience  many 
forms  of  chaos  in  order  to  understand  good  order. 

But  is  not  sin,  too,  an  experience  ?  And  can  the  good 
man  possess  that  experience  ?  We  have  said,  in  our  dis- 


THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

cussion  of  principles,  that  temptation  to  evil  is  an  essential 
element  in  every  exercise  of  active  virtue.  But  a  con- 
quered temptation,  although  an  evil,  which  is  conquered  by 
the  good  man  just  because  it  is  an  evil,  is  still  no  sin.  Sin 
proper,  however,  is,  in  us  mortals,  another  experience,  and  is 
ipso  facto  no  part  of  the  experience  of  the  good  man  as  such, 
just  as  an  active  disease  is  no  part  of  the  life  of  a  healthy 
organism.  Here  indeed  is  the  body  of  death  from  which  the 
good  man,  as  such,  longs  to  be  delivered  altogether.  His 
resisted  temptation  is  part  of  his  life — the  death  in  life  of 
which  before  we  spoke.  But  his  sin  is  no  element  of  his 
good  life. 

And  yet,  since  sin  forms  so  large  a  part  of  human  life, 
and  is,  for  us  men,  vastly  more  than  temptation,  and  since 
the  endless  consequences  of  sin — remorse,  all  the  arts  of  con- 
cealment, all  the  ingenuity  of  effort  to  repair — the  rejoicing, 
too,  of  the  froward  in  their  frowardness — the  fierce  sense  of 
freedom  of  which  our  own  Hawthorne  tells  in  the  Marble 
Faun  as  an  experience  that  follows  upon  a  crime — the  long 
and  perplexingly  fascinating  agony  of  the  consciousness  of 
a  life  of  sin — the  revelry  and  the  fruitless  later  repentance  of 
the  Faust  of  the  original  story — the  contrition  of  David — 
the  conversion  of  the  dying  thief  on  the  cross — the  raptures 
of  a  saved  Mary  Magdalene : — since  all  these,  and  countless 
other  human  experiences  flow  not  from  resisted  temptation, 
but  from  actual  sin,  were  we  then  not  one-sided  in  our  dis- 
cussion of  principles,  where  we  limited  ourselves  to  the 
study  of  temptation,  and  said  that  the  sinner  knows  no 
more  of  the  motives  of  sin  (which  are  the  temptations)  than 
does  the  good  man,  equally  tempted,  who  resists  and  con- 
quers the  temptation  ?  Tliat,  as  an  one-sided  view  of  life, 
may  be  true.  But  temptation  is  but  a  small  part  of  the  sin- 
ner's experience.  It  is  consequence  that  he  knows,  and 
herein  consists  his  intellectual  opportunity.  Here,  indeed, 
is  a  "moral  deficiency"  very  positively  conditioning  an 


118  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

"  intellectual  function."  In  hell  and  in  purgatory  they  do 
thus  know  what  must  needs  be  wholly  unknown  to  the  an- 
gels, and  but  ill-conceived  by  the  saints,  excepting  as  the 
saints  remember  the  long  life  in  sin  from  which  some  of 
them  escaped.  This  being  true,  can  one  (to  use  still  the 
convenient  allegorical  fictions) — can  one,  as  a  moralist, 
comprehend  the  world  of  human  life,  unless  he  has  lived 
in  hell  and  in  purgatory,  as  well  as  among  the  good  ?  What 
sort  of  a  moralist  is,  then,  one  who  has  had  little  or  no  ex- 
perience of  sin  ? 

The  first  answer  is  so  obvious  that  I  wonder  that  any  one 
should  miss  it  Such  moral  deficiencies  do  indeed  determine 
certain  intellectual  functions,  but  precisely  as  they  also  de- 
termine certain  moral  functions.  And  the  way  in  which 
they  determine  the  latter  is  very  enlightening  as  to  the  sig- 
nificance of  the  whole  controversy. 

Sins,  I  say,  are  possible  conditions,  not  only  of  a  deep 
intellectual  knowledge  of  certain  very  common  and  mo- 
mentous human  experiences,  but  also  of  certain  extraordi- 
narily heroic  moral  deeds.  Nobody  has  harder  moral  work 
to  do  than  many  a  sinner  who  has  repented.  Nobody, 
therefore,  can  show  us,  on  occasion,  a  more  brilliant  ex- 
ample of  active  virtue  than  he  may  learn  to  do.  The  out- 
cast on  account  of  a  crime  sometimes  has  a  peculiarly  good 
opportunity  to  become  at  one  great  stroke  a  saint.  The 
thing  has  occasionally  taken  place;  for  the  shock  of  the 
consequences  of  crime  has  sometimes  been  enough  to  shatter 
the  habits  of  a  sinful  career  in  one  moment  of  conversion. 
Apart  from  sudden  conversion,  which  is  rare,  the  most  seri- 
ous moral  tasks  of  many  men  are  furnished  to  them  by  the 
office  of  building  up  through  their  newly-acquired  virtues 
what  theii  former  waywardness  has  destroyed.*  And  in 

*  A  brilliant  literary  example  of  moral  recovery  and  of  the  heroic  re- 
building of  a  shattered  life  one  finds  depicted  in  Sienkiwicz's  remarkable 


THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL.        H9 

this  way,  indeed,  the  wrath  of  man  is  sometimes  taught  to 
praise  the  good. 

But  surely  the  fact  that  certain  peculiarly  great  oppor- 
tunities for  virtue  in  the  way  of  reform  and  of  making 
atonement  are  furnished  to  the  sinner  by  his  own  past 
crimes  —  opportunities  which  those  of  the  virtuous  who 
should  never  have  swerved  from  the  right  could  not  get  — 
this  fact,  I  say,  does  not  at  all  tend  to  confuse  us  as  to  the 
nature  of  sin  and  of  virtue.  Sin,  when  past,  furnishes 
especial  opportunities  for  future  virtue.  But  one  who  de- 
sires virtue  will  not  think  that  he  shows  thus  his  desire  for 
virtue  by  first  sinning  that  grace  may  abound.  When  we 
once  have  sinned,  our  exceptional  opportunities  to  atone 
may  encourage  us  to  begin  afresh  with  zest  the  moral  task. 
But  whoever  sins  under  pretense  of  seeking  hereby  for  this 
exceptional  opportunity  to  get  a  new  and  higher  virtue  by 
means  of  his  intended  repentance,  such  a  man  does  not  de- 
ceive us  by  his  pretenses.  He  is  a  liar  and  the  truth  is  not 
in  him.  He  sins  because  he  wants  to  sin,  not  because  he 
wants  any  new  moral  function  to  be  determined  by  his  pre- 
vious moral  deficiency,  and  until  he  learns  not  to  lie  he 
will  remain  deficient  and  without  further  function. 

I  say  that  this  very  familiar  determination  of  future 
moral  opportunities  and  excellencies  by  past  misdeeds 
shows,  first  of  all,  that  here,  as  earlier  in  our  discussion,  the 
dependence  of  function  upon  deficiency  holds  within  -the 
moral  sphere  itself  precisely  as  much  as  in  the  comparison 
of  moral  with  intellectual  function  and  deficiency,  so  that 
the  case  is  one  of  an  universal  problem  of  life,  and  not 
merely  one  of  certain  specific  oppositions  between  moral 
and  intellectual  interests.  I  say,  also,  that  the  reason  for 
this  dependence  of  the  opportunity  for  new  goodness  upon 


e,  The  Deluge,  recently  translated  from  the  Polish  by  Mr.  Curtin. 
Kmita,  the  hero  of  this  romance,  is  a  magnificent  instance  for  the  moralist. 


120  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

past  sin  is  obvious  enough,  and  the  outcome  in  so  far  not  at 
all  misleading. 

But  now,  further,  just  as  the  moral  function  depends  on 
the  previous  moral  deficiency,  precisely,  and  only,  in  so  far 
as  one  does  not  remain  in  the  deficiency,  but  transcends  it, 
so  (as  I  think  that  experience  will  show)  it  is  not  our  mere 
dwelling  in  sin  that  ever  enlarges  our  deeper  insight  into 
life  so  much  as  it  is  our  looking  back  upon  our  sin,  and 
representing  it  in  precisely  the  light  which  makes  it  appear 
as  sin,  and  so  as  rationally  condemned,  that  enables  us  to 
read  the  intellectual  lesson  of  the  sinful  experience  itself. 
Regarding  the  matter,  then,  for  the  moment,  solely  as  an 
"  intellectual  function,"  it  is  Macbeth  after  the  murder,  or  in 
his  latest  monologues,  who  sees  the  truth  of  his  case  as  it  is. 
It  is  Dostoievsky's  hero  in  Crime  and  Punishment,  just 
before  he  gives  himself  up  to  the  police,  whose  eyes  are 
truly  open.  This  is  the  lesson  of  countless  works  of  art  in 
which  the  moral  tragedy  is  portrayed.  However  coolly 
planned  beforehand,  the  crime  is  still  relatively  blind.  The 
still  cooler  and  far  deeper  intellectual  insight  of  later  mo- 
ments lifts  the  ransomed  criminal  above  himself.  He  reads 
now  the  lesson  of  his  case  ;  but  he  reads  only  to  condemn. 
His  intellectual  function  is  itself,  if  his  eyes  get  opened,  the 
beginning  of  a  moral  function. 

Moreover,  this  not  only  often  is,  but  always  must  needs 
be  the  case.  If  the  right  is,  as  it  is,  not  the  object  of  super- 
stitious dogma,  but  of  science  and  of  reason,  and  is  known 
to  be  the  right  as  soon  as  one  clearly  sees  the  situation,  then 
a  true  intellectual  insight  into  sin  means  a  condemnation  of 
it,  and  one  has  not  the  true  "  intellectual  function "  until 
one  has  really  begun  to  transcend  the  "  moral  deficiency." 
After  all,  the  freest  act  of  sinful  choice  doubtless  involves  a 
certain  deliberate  ignorance  of  the  reasons  in  favor  of  the 
good,  which  itself  involves  intellectual  defect.  If  so,  how- 
ever, the  relation  of  the  "  moral  deficiency "  to  the  "  intel- 


THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL.        121 

lectual  function"  is  precisely  like  the  just  noticed  relation 
of  any  moral  deficiency  to  the  often  very  noble  moral  func- 
tions that  may  be  founded  upon  it.  The  latter  relation  is 
inspiring  when  we  have  sinned,  because  it  shows  us  the 
way  out.  But  the  expectation  of  getting  this  "  far  off  inter- 
est "  of  crime,  of  plucking  this  flower  that  blooms  in  hell, 
attracts  of  itself  nobody  into  crime ;  and  whoever  says  that 
he  commits  crime  with  any  such  noble  purpose  in  view  is, 
I  repeat,  a  liar.  But  just  so,  whoever  pretended  to  choose 
sin  for  the  sake  of  that  possible  sin-transcending  insight, 
would  be  but  pretending. 

For  the  reasons  now  explained,  it  is  also  clear  that  wilful 
sinners,  who  have  not  learned  to  repent,  are  on  the  whole, 
as  respects  the  cultivation  of  intellectual  functions,  far  less 
instructive  to  themselves  than  they  are  to  the  intellect  of 
any  observant  student  of  human  nature  who,  not  being 
slave  to  their  sin,  has  leisure  to  study  their  varied  expe- 
rience, and  temperament  enough  to  interpret  life  with  re- 
spectable skill  when  he  sees  it  The  sinners  whose  eyes  are 
finally  opened  have  transcended  their  "deficiency."  The 
relatively  blind,  who  are  still  slaves  to  their  sin,  are  in  many 
ways  an  open  book  to  the  wiser  among  their  fellows.  And 
it  is  indeed  true  that  it  is  the  right  and  the  duty  of  every 
moralist  to  learn,  with  due  prudence,  but  without  foolish 
timidity,  whatever  he  really  needs  to  know  of  the  disorders 
of  the  moral  world,  from  an  observation — not  cynical  but 
humane — of  the  records  of  sinful  experience  in  his  fellows. 
Thus  indeed  their  deficiency  may  very  directly  and  usefully 
condition  his  function.  And  he  will  learn  of  life  while  learn- 
ing also  how  to  help  the  sinners  themselves  towards  virtue. 

But  now  shall  we  descend  from  these  matters  to  mere 
trivialities?  Shall  we  illustrate  the  relations  of  function 
and  deficiency  elsewhere  ?  Shall  we  seriously  inquire 
whether  a  successful  liar  is  not  naturally  a  more  skilful 
person  than  a  mere  blunt  speaker  of  the  truth  ?  Shall  we 


122  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

reason  that  a  liar,  like  the  skilful  hero  in  the  fairy  tale,  or 
like  Odysseus  with  the  Cyclops,  must  hold  at  least  two  ideas 
at  once  in  his  head,  while  his  giant  or  other  dupe  thinks  of 
but  one  at  a  time  ?  Well,  if  these  things  must  be  argued,  it 
is  indeed  an  old  notion,  precisely  as  old  as  those  fairy  tales 
whose  heroes  are  liars,  that  lying  is  a  peculiarly  clever  busi- 
ness, and  is  so  precisely  for  the  reason  that  obviously  guided 
the  authors  of  the  fairy  tales — namely,  because  it  is  so 
much  more  skilful  to  think  two  ideas  at  a  time  than  one 
idea.  But  surely  the  civilized  man,  for  whom  truth,  whether 
legal,  commercial,  political,  or  moral,  has  now  grown  to  be 
so  complex  an  affair,  has  transcended  such  trivialities.  In 
all  the  more  serious  practical  affairs  of  our  modern  lives,  we 
wholly  exhaust  our  stock  of  ingenuity  in  trying  even  to 
think  the  truth  as  it  is,  and  fail  at  that.  We  may  lie  all  we 
choose,  and  may  even  succeed  as  liars,  but  we  shall  get  no 
more  cleverness  thereby  than  would  be  at  all  events  needed 
to  think  or  to  say  even  the  blunt  truth  in  its  nakedest  sim- 
plicity. We  no  longer  live  in  a  world  where  there  is  ques- 
tion of  stupid  giants  with  one  idea,  and  clever  heroes  with 
two  at  a  time.  The  honest  man's  wits  are  all  needed  in 
order  to  meet  even  the  demands  of  honesty.  For  the  rest, 
if  a  liar  needs  cleverness  to  think  his  supposed  two  ideas,  as 
in  the  fairy  tale,  what  would  an  honest  man  need  who  must 
learn  to  defeat  the  liar  ?  Surely  he  would  have  to  think  of 
the  truth,  and  also  of  the  liar's  false  idea,  and  finally  of  the 
proper  plan  for  meeting  the  liar's  falsehood  and  for  bring- 
ing it  to  naught  without  lying  himself :  in  sum,  then,  at 
least  three  ideas  to  the  liar's  two.  But  herewith  such  trifling 
computations  may  as  well  cease.  Not  thus  are  moral  de- 
ficiencies, as  such,  at  all  peculiar  in  being  sources  of  some 
sorts  of  intellectual  ability.  There  is  no  possible  degree  of 
cleverness  or  of  ingenuity  that  is  not  sadly  needed  in  our 
complex  world  for  every  good  cause  whose  undertakings 
are  serious. 


THE  KNOWLEDGE  OP  GOOD  AXD  EVIL.        123 

But  surely  there  still  remain— do  there  not  ? — vast  re- 
gions of  knowledge  which  it  is  unholy  for  any  given  indi- 
vidual to  tread  upon.  And  to  enter  these  fields  would 
therefore  involve  "  intellectual  function,"  and  still  also  true 
14  moral  deficiency  " ;  or  would  it  not  ?  Yes,  indeed,  it  is  as 
easy  as  you  please,  and  as  trivial,  to  mention,  in  case  of  any 
of  us,  any  number  of  such  forbidden  regions.  My  neighbor 
has  left  his  house  unguarded,  his  desk  unlocked.  It  would 
greatly  amuse  my  curiosity  to  read  his  diary,  his  love-letters, 
his  other  confidential  documents.  And  yet  I  may  not  do  so. 
Why  ?  Because  the  intellect  is  somehow  mysteriously  op- 
posed in  its  interests  to  the  conscience  ?  No :  but  for  the 
simple  reason  that  this  would  be  theft.  This  knowledge  is 
not  mine.  These  secrets  are  his  property,  like  his  purse, 
save  in  being  more  sacred.  Here  the  mystery  of  the  rela- 
tion between  ignorance  and  virtue  is  merely  that  of  the 
existence  of  any  private  rights  whatever.  As  his  money  is 
good  for  what  it  can  buy,  but  is  not  mine  to  spend,  so  his 
knowledge  is  here  a  good  tiling  to  have,  but  it  is  not  for  me 
to  purloin.  But  now,  under  the  category  thus  illustrated, 
countless  types  of  actually  forbidden  knowledge  fall,  of 
knowledge,  however,  that  is  forbidden  not  because  the  in- 
tellect ought  as  such  to  be  limited  in  its  scope,  but  because 
a  man  must  keep  to  his  own,  and  in  a  world  where  men  live 
together  possession  has  to  be  private,  and  therefore  exclu- 
sive. My  neighbor's  house,  his  land,  his  affairs — anything 
that  is  his — I  must  not  steal  or  covet.  If  this  limitation 
involves  not  only  respect  for  material  property,  but  for 
countless,  and  often  nameless  privacies  of  his  inner  and 
outer  life,  then  it  is  not  the  rights  of  the  intellect  that  are 
at  stake,  but  the  rights  of  the  person. 

On  the  other  hand,  as  to  the  rights  of  the  intellect  itself, 
knowledge,  as  such,  we  must  maintain,  is  always  an  inno- 
cent, and  frequently  a  holy  possession.  Its  moral  limita- 
tions, its  perils,  its  implied  sinfulness,  these  always  belong 


124  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

to  it  per  accidens,  and  with  respect  to  specific  conditions 
and  individuals.  There  is  no  knowledge  whatever  to  which 
somebody  may  not  conceivably  have  a  right.  That  not 
everybody  may,  without  sin,  possess  a  given  sort,  or  degree, 
or  fact  of  knowledge,  depends  always  upon  specific  and  per- 
fectly comprehensible  conditions  relating  to  this  sort,  or  de- 
gree, or  fact.  I  may  not  seek  to  know  another's  secret  by 
stealth  ;  I  may  not  seek  to  know  the  results  of  a  sin  by  my- 
self deliberately  sinning  ;  I  may  not  seek  to  add  to  my  pres- 
ent burdens  a  temptation  that  I  have  not  now,  and  that, 
when  I  get  it,  may  prove  corrupting  to  me.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  man  whose  secret  this  is  may  be  blessed  in 
knowing  it.  The  man  who  has  sinned  may  gain  inspiration 
for  reform  from  coolly  considering  the  very  heart  and  the 
essence  of  his  sin,  that  he  may  find  in  its  fruits  the  seeds  of 
coming  virtue.  The  man  who  has  the  temptation,  by  facing 
it,  and  so  by  knowing  its  secret,  may  win  control  over  it, 
and  may  thereby  use  his  opportunity  for  holiness.  When 
in  progress  I  abandon  one  knowledge  for  another,  I  do  so 
because  the  other  is  more  of  a  knowledge.  And  thus  it  is 
never  my  business  as  a  moral  being  to  shun  knowledge  as 
knowledge,  but  always  it  is  my  task  to  get  wisdom  as  wis- 
dom, and  then  to  use  it  in  the  cause  of  the  right 


V. 

NATURAL  LAW,  ETHICS,  AND  EVOLUTION* 

THE  discussion  seems  to  me  to  have  reached  a  stage 
where  it  is  just  as  well  to  supplement  controversies  over  the 
precise  meaning  or  the  bearings  of  Professor  Huxley's  ad- 
dress, by  a  few  independent  efforts,  however  imperfect  these 
may  be,  to  deal  with  the  questions.  (1)  Whether  the  "  ethi- 
cal process  "  is  a  "  part  of  the  cosmical  process "  ;  and  (2) 
whether  it  stands  in  a  relation  of  opposition  or  of  harmony 
to  the  tendencies  of  this  cosmical  process ;  and  (3)  finally,  in 
case  the  relation  of  the  "  ethical  process  "  to  the  "  cosmical 
process  "  is  one  of  opposition,  what  the  source  of  this  opposi- 
tion is.  The  following  paper  is  a  sketch  of  such  an  effort 

The  student  of  nature  is  trying  to  reduce  observed  facts 
to  universal  laws.  In  so  far  as  he  can  do  this,  he  succeeds 
in  what  certain  recent  students  of  the  Logic  of  Science  (e.  g., 
Mach)  have  called  the  description  of  the  facts.  The  funda- 
mental principle  of  empirical  science  is,  that  you  can  only 
tell  what  a  given  fact  is,  in  so  far  as  you  can  describe  its 
nature  in  universal  terms — i.  e.,  in  terms  which  identify 
this  nature  with  the  nature  of  other  facts.  Were  all  the 
facts  of  our  experience  single,  discontinuous,  unrepeated 
even  in  memory,  and  as  different  from  one  another  as  tones 


*  An  eaaay  contributed  to  a  seriefl  of  papers  upon  the  well-known  ad- 
draw  of  Professor  Huxley.  The  discussion,  in  which  several  other  writers 
took  part,  was  published  in  the  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  The  pres- 
ent contribution  appeared  in  July,  1895. 

m 


126  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

are  now  different  from  odors,  or  as  brightness  is  different 
from  swiftness,  then  we  might  all  of  us  experience  the 
world  ;  but  we  could  none  of  us  describe  in  the  least  what 
it  contained.  This  world  might  even  be  allowed  to  have  one 
sort  of  uniformity  in  it — viz.,  it  might  be  as  richly  delight- 
ful a  world  as  you  please,  from  moment  to  moment ;  but  it 
would  be  not  only  an  uncomprehended,  but  an  unreported 
world — a  world  of  whose  facts  no  record  could  be  made.  On 
the  other  hand,  a  world  where  experience  can  be  recorded, 
reported,  described,  has  two  characters :  First,  there  are  in 
it  facts  whose  similarities  can  be  noted — i.  e.,  there  are 
"  wholes  "  or  "  groups  "  of  phenomenal  elements,  which  are 
alike  in  some  respects  ;  and,  secondly,  the  noted  similarities 
are  such  as  permit  you,  in  terms  of  these  similarities  them- 
selves, to  define  certain  complex  groups  of  phenomena,  as 
"  having  the  same  structure,"  or  as  ''  being  built  up  accord- 
ing to  the  same  rule,"  or  as  "  exemplifying  the  same  law," 
so  that  at  least  some  of  the  details  of  each  fact  noted  are 
"  explained  "  by  this  law.  To  "  explain  "  a  given  phenome- 
nal detail,  noted  in  your  experience,  say  d,  by  the  "  natural 
law  "  which  is  said  to  "  require  "  its  presence,  or  to  "  make  it 
necessary,"  is  simply  to  point  out  that  the  phenomenon  d  is 
part  of  a  larger  whole,  a  "  fact  "  in  the  substantive  sense — 
viz.,  abed,  and  that  this  "  whole  fact,"  abed,  has  a  structure, 
or  "make-up,"  a  describable  "build,"  a  "typical  constitu- 
tion," which  other  whole  facts  of  experience,  viz.,  ABCD,  or 
pqrs,  also  exemplify,  while  this  constitution  is  such  as  to  in- 
volve the  presence  of  d  in  case  a,  b,  and  c  are  present,  and  in 
case  the  whole  is  to  preserve  the  aforesaid  typical  structure. 
You  then  say  that,  since  the  whole  fact  abed  resembles 
ABCD,  or  pqrs,  not  in  its  details  as  such  (i.  e.,  in  its  con- 
tents), but  in  their  structural  relations — i.  e.,  in  the  general 
type  or  build  of  each  of  these  whole  facts — therefore  the 
same  rule  or  law  which  defines  D  by  its  relations  to  the 
other  phenomena,  A,  B,  C,  of  its  own  group,  and  which 


NATURAL  LAW,  ETHICS,  AND  EVOLUTION.     127 

defines  8  by  its  relations  to  the  other  phenomena,  p,  q,  and  r, 
of  the  group  pqrs,  can  be  realized  or  exemplified  when  you 
pass  to  an  abc  group,  only  if  there  is  present  a  fourth  phe- 
nomenon, d,  which  is  such  as  to  have  the  same  structural 
relation  to  abc  in  the  whole  fact  whereof  abc  and  d  are 
parts,  as  was  present  in  case  of  the  facts  ABCD  and  pqrs. 

My  statement  is  abstract.  But  the  principle  is  simple. 
It  means  that  you  cannot  describe  whole  facts — i.e.,  that 
you  cannot  report,  record,  verify,  or  comprehend  their 
structures,  without  conceiving  the  phenomenal  details  of 
these  facts  as  subject  to  laws — i.e.,  to  rules  of  structure, 
which  are  exemplified  by  other  whole  facts  of  experience  as 
well  as  by  the  fact  that  may  be,  at  any  time,  under  discussion. 
The  "  uniformity  of  nature  "  is  thus  the  conditio  sine  qua 
non  of  the  describability  of  her  facts.  And  on  the  other  hand, 
to  report  whole  facts  is,  to  some  extent,  to  explain  their  details. 
It  is,  therefore,  not  one  thing  to  describe  facts,  and  another 
thing  to  explain  the  elements  that  enter  into  their  consti- 
tution. But,  in  so  far  as  you  describe  the  wholes,  you 
explain  the  parts  of  these  wholes.  There  is,  indeed,  no  a 
priori  principle  that  every  experience  which  may  occur  to 
anybody  is  describable  at  all.  Anybody's  experience  might 
be,  to  any  extent,  apparently  or  really  unique.  In  so  far  as  it 
was  unique,  science  could  only  ignore  it,  as  being  a  "  private  " 
or  "  personal  "  experience.  But  if  an  experienced  fact  is  to 
be  described,  it  must  be,  in  some  respect,  capable  of  indenti- 
fication  with  other  facts.  And  different  facts  can  be  describ- 
ably  identical  only  as  regards  their  structure.  But  if  two 
facts  have  the  same  structure,  then  their  details,  the  ele- 
ments of  which  they  are  made  up,  stand  in  relations  to  one 
another  which  exemplify  this  structure.  Any  one  element, 
tln-ii.  will  appear  in  each  fact,  as  explained  by  and  conform- 
able to  the  law  which  links  it  to  the  other  elements  of  the 
whole  fact  of  which  it  is  a  part  The  presence  in  the  world 
of  various  whole  facts  that  exemplify  the  same  structure,  is 
10 


128  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

then  a  condition  of  the  describability  of  each  of  these  whole 
facts.  But  the  describability  of  any  whole  fact  involves 
what  appears  as  the  explanation  of  the  parts  or  elements  of 
this  fact  by  the  law  or  structure  of  the  whole  to  which  they 
belong.  In  brief,  the  structure  actually  common  to  many 
facts  also  appears  as  the  law  which  explains  or  necessitates 
the  constituent  elements  of  each  fact. 

Nature  then,  in  order  to  be  describable,  has  to  be  viewed 
or  conceived  as  such  that  the  details  of  every  natural  phe- 
nomenon shall  be  "  subject  to,"  "  determined  by,"  or  "  neces- 
sitated by,"  the  laws  which  describe  the  structure  of  the  phe- 
nomenal wholes  of  which  each  detail  is  a  part.  If  any 
given  natural  phenomenon,  itself  a  mere  fragment  (e.  g.,  the 
petal  of  a  particular  flower,  the  tooth  of  a  carnivorous  ani- 
mal, the  total  phase  of  an  individual  lunar  eclipse),  is  to  be 
conceived  as  a  part  of  a  certain  whole,  then  this  part  must 
be  conceived  as  if  "  explained,"  or  "  necessitated,"  by  the 
law  which  describes,  in  universal  terms,  the  whole  "  thing  " 
or  "  process  "  of  which  the  fragment  is  a  part.  And  this  is 
what  is  meant  by  the  "  necessity  "  of  natural  events.  Natu- 
ral necessity  is  an  incident  of  the  conceived  describability 
of  natural  phenomena  when  grouped  in  whole  facts. 

That  natural  phenomena  shall  be  conceived  as  necessary, 
or  as  subject  to  rigid  law,  and  that  the  "  cosmic  process " 
shall  be  viewed  as  one  where  "  mere  necessity  reigns,"  is 
therefore  not  a  belief  capable  of  any  but  a  relatively  subjec- 
tive and  human  interpretation.  Experience  comes  and  goes 
in  its  own  way.  No  mortal  lias  ever  "experienced "  the  ab- 
solute necessity  of  any  cosmic  process  whatever.  Chance,  as 
Mr.  Charles  S.  Peirce  has  well  observed,  streams  in  through 
every  channel  of  our  senses.  Trust  then  to  mere  experience, 
as  it  comes  to  any  one  of  us,  and  such  experience  can  never 
prove  that  there  are  "  cosmic  laws." 

But  natural  science  depends  not  upon  merely  accepting, 
but  also  upon  reporting,  and  upon  recording,  the  phenom- 


NATURAL  LAW,  ETHICS,  AND   EVOLUTION.      129 

ena,  upon  comparing  notes,  upon  trusting  nobody's  private 
experience  as  such,  upon  a  process,  then,  of  publicly  verifi- 
able description  of  facts.  This  process — not  now  the  cosmic 
process,  but  the  process  of  description — involves  noting  uni- 
formities, and  depends  for  its  success  upon  our  ability  to  note 
the  latter.  The  describable  uniformities  are  structural  uni- 
formities— i.  e.,  those  expressible  in  terms  of  universal  "rules 
of  structure  "or  "laws."  The  law  of  structure  of  a  given  whole, 
be  this  whole  a  "  thing  "  or  a  "  process,"  a  coexistent  whole,  or  a 
whole  of  successive  elements,  appears,  in  our  slowly  formed, 
socially  communicated,  and  gradually  verified  scientific 
conceptions,  as  determining  the  necessity  of  every  element 
of  any  fact  by  virtue  of  the  whole  to  which  the  element  be- 
longs. The  only  further  assumption  upon  which  the  doc- 
trine of  the  objective  universality  of  rigid  cosmic  laws,  as 
distinct  from  the  foregoing  subjective  and  human  need  for 
such  laws,  depends,  is  the  assumption  which  I  have  else- 
where examined  at  some  length  * — viz.,  the  assumption  that, 
in  our  human  experience,  only  the  relatively  describable 
data  stand  for  the  external  or  physical  world  as  such — the 
endless  indescribabilities  of  our  experience,  the  "  chance  "  of 
Mr.  Peirce's  account,  being  viewed,  by  scientific  thinking,  as 
standing  for  the  merely  "  individual  "or  "  internal  "  element 
of  our  experience,  or  for  the  limitations  of  the  individual 
point  of  view.  For  science,  as  I  have  just  pointed  out,  is  an 
essentially  social  affair.  The  described  "cosmical"  fact  is 
a  fact  which  others  are  conceived  to  be  capable  of  verifying 
besides  the  observer  who  now  describes.  And  as  only  the 
describable  aspect  of  our  experience  is  communicable  to 
others  for  them  to  verify,  and  as  only  the  verifiable  is,  scien- 
tifically speaking,  to  be  viewed  as  "cosmical  "  at  all,  it  fol- 
lows that,  while  private  experience  is  full  of  what  seems  to 

*  Cf.  the  Philosophical  Review  for  September,  1894,  and  The  Spirit  of 
Modem  Philosophy,  lecture  xii,  on  The  World  of  Description. 


130  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

be  chance,  we  all  have  come  to  regard  the  cosmical  process 
as  one  subject  to  the  most  rigid  law.  But  one  must  carefully 
bear  in  mind  this  genesis  and  meaning  of  the  whole  con- 
cept, both  of  necessary  natural  law  and  of  the  cosmical  pro- 
cesses themselves,  in  any  comparison  of  the  "  cosmical  pro- 
cess "  with  the  "  ethical  process."  Hence  our  present  need 
for  this  rather  technical  summary. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  conception  of  moral  laws,  by 
which  given  acts  are  to  be  judged,  and  of  "ethical  pro- 
cesses," such  as  what  is  called  "  Progress" — processes  which 
involve  a  gradual  approach  towards  a  conformity  of  given 
facts  to  given  ethical  ideals — this  whole  conception  of  the 
moral  world  as  such,  involves  an  entirely  different  point  of 
view  in  presence  of  human  experience.  To  conceive  the 
"  cosmical  process "  as  such,  you  have  to  conceive  it  as  in 
every  detail  subject  to  laws — viz.,  to  precisely  the  cosmical 
laws.  But  you  can  well  view  the  facts  in  the  light  of  a 
moral  ideal,  while  believing  that  the  now  existent  physical 
facts  run  in  some  ways  directly  counter  to  the  ideal.  Yes,  so 
to  view  the  facts  is  inevitable  whenever  you  have  ideals. 
For  you  derive  your  ideals,  ultimately,  from  an  aspect  of 
your  experience  which  has  not  to  do  with  describing  experi- 
enced facts,  but  with  desiring  ideal  objects  that  are  absent 
when  you  desire  them.  It  is  true  that  what  you  rationally 
desire,  you  can,  in  general,  both  describe,  and  hope,  with  the 
aid  of  a  possible  good  fortune,  some  time  either  to  verify 
yourself,  or  to  view  as  verifiable  by  somebody  else,  in  whose 
interest  you  desire  this  object.  But  you  do  not  desire  the 
object  in  so  far  as  it  is  describable.  And  furthermore,  just 
in  so  far  as  you  desire  any  object,  its  presence  is  not  yet 
verifiable.  One  desires  the  absent.  The  cosmical  fact — i.  e., 
the  physical  fact,  viewed  as  subject  to  natural  law,  is,  then, 
an  object  in  so  far  as  it  is  both  describable  and  verifiable. 
The  object  of  our  ideal  is  desirable  not  in  so  far  as  it  is 
describable,  and,  again,  precisely  in  so  far  as  it  is  not  yet 


NATURAL  LAW,  ETHICS,  AND  EVOLUTION.      131 

verifiable.  Herein,  then,  lies  a  double  contrast  between  the 
natural  fact  as  such,  and  the  object  of  desire,  as  such.  The 
contrast  comes  out  well  in  case  of  future  facts.  The  future 
eclipse,  as  natural  phenomenon,  is  but  an  incident  in  the 
vast  describable  whole  fact  called  the  process  of  the  solar 
system.  As  such,  the  eclipse  can  be  predicted  as  something 
necessary,  because  this  process,  as  a  whole,  is  conceived  as 
one  describable  in  terms  of  known  and  universal  law.  The 
eclipse  is  also  verifiable,  at  the  time  of  its  occurrence,  by  all 
rightly  situated  observers.  But  so  far  the  eclipse  is  no  ob- 
ject of  desire.  Desire  is  as  vain  as  would  be  prayer.  The 
eclipse  is  to  be  verified  only  at  the  computed  time,  but  then 
it  must  be  verifiable.  Science  does  not  aim  at  the  eclipse, 
nor  does  she  pray  for  the  eclipse.  She  predicts,  verifies,  re- 
ports, records — all  in  due  season.  But  the  eclipse  is  not 
only  natural  fact,  but  interesting  experience  in  the  lives  of 
the  men  who  come  to  see  it.  In  so  far,  one  can  desire  to 
live  to  see  the  eclipse,  can  made  an  ideal  of  being  present 
when  it  occurs,  etc.  But  in  desiring  the  experience,  one 
does  not  compute  the  eclipse,  nor  does  one  verify  the  com- 
putation. One  desires  the  eclipse  in  so  far  as  one  still  ex- 
pects but  cannot  yet  verify  its  coming.  And  to  desire  to  see 
the  eclipse  is  simply  not  to  compute  its  coming,  but  just  to 
make  this  sight  as  such  an  ideal,  and  not  to  view  the  eclipse 
itself  as  a  cosmical  fact 

In  consequence,  our  present  contrast  might  be  stated 
thus:  Phenomena  are  desired  (or  dreaded)  precisely  in  so 
far  as  they  appear  to  be  interestingly  novel.  Novelty,  then, 
is  a  conditio  sine  qua  non  of  all  ideal  value  when  regarded 
from  a  temporal  point  of  view.  But  phenomena  are  expli- 
cable precisely  in  so  far  as  they  are  conceived  as  not  novel, 
but  as  mere  cases  under  law.  And  again :  The  desired,  or 
the  dreaded,  must  be,  as  such,  now  un verifiable.  But  the 
explained  is  known  to  be  such  precisely  in  so  far  as  univer- 
sal explanations  are  actually  verified.  When  I  recognize 


132  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

something  as  a  case  of  a  "  cosmical  process,"  my  recognition, 
as  such,  involves  therefore  no  desire.  One  may  say,  indeed, 
that  the  actual  can  be  approved,  as  conforming  to  an  ideal 
standard.  But,  for  us  mortals,  this  approval,  whenever 
desires  are  concerned  (and  a  purely  contemplative,  aesthetic 
approval  concerns  us  not  here),  is  the  approval  of  the  fact 
in  so  far  as  it  has  been  desired.  In  brief,  then,  the  ex- 
plained or  necessary  phenomenon  of  the  "  cosmical  process  " 
is  such  in  so  far  as  it  embodies  the  universal  law  in  a  specif- 
ic case.  But  the  object  of  desire  is  such  in  so  far  as  the  law 
or  rule  which  this  desire  involves  has  not  yet  been  embodied 
in  the  precise  sense  in  which  it  here  needs  to  be  embodied. 

Here  is  the  root  of  the  endless  conflict  between  the  eth- 
ical view  of  the  world  and  the  explanatory  or  "  scientific  " 
view.  For  a  rational  ethical  doctrine  is  simply  some  uni- 
versalized system  of  desires.  What  the  right  system  may 
be  concerns  us  not  here.  Enough,  if  one  has  an  ideal,  he 
bases  it  on  some  type  of  desire.  If  nothing  were  desirable, 
there  would  be  no  ideals.  A  man  with  an  ethical  doctrine 
has  simply  taught  himself  what  he  now  thinks  to  be  wisely 
desirable.  But  he  still  desires.  Thus  desiring,  he  looks  out 
upon  experience.  There  occur  phenomena.  These  his  sci- 
ence "  apperceives,"  recognizes,  describes  as  cases  of  law, 
explains,  calls  necessary.  But  the  very  nature  of  this  ex- 
planatory or  descriptive  sort  of  consciousness  is  that  it  says, 
"these  phenomena  are  not  novel."  The  consciousness  of 
the  possessor  of  ideals,  however,  essentially  asserts,  at  every 
breath  one  draws,  "  Yet  the  novel,  in  so  far  as  it  justly  ap- 
pears novel,  is  precisely  what  I  want"  The  explaining 
consciousness  insists :  "  The  law  is  eternally  realized.  What 
has  been  will  be.  There  seems  to  be  alteration.  There  is 
none."  The  ethical  consciousness  retorts :  "  The  law  is  not 
yet  realized.  In  this  '  not  yet '  is  my  life.  I  have  no  abid- 
ing city.  I  seek  one  out  of  sight."  Meanwhile,  of  course,  it 
is  perfectly  possible  to  point  out  common  territory,  where 


NATURAL  LAW,  ETHICS,  AND  EVOLUTION.     133 

these  two  views  seem  to  meet  without  direct  conflict. 
"  You  must  use  my  insight,"  says  the  explaining  conscious- 
ness, "  if  you  want  to  realize  your  ideals.  In  vain  do  you 
desire  as  ideal  what  my  laws  forbid  as  forever  un verifi- 
able." The  ethical  consciousness  must  accept  this  inevit- 
able comment  But  it  still  responds :  "  Whatever  laws  of 
yours  I  recognize,  they  become  to  me  not  my  ideals,  but 
the  mere  material  for  realizing  my  ideals.  If  I  could  not 
interfere  with  the  phenomenal  expression  that  your  laws 
are  to  get,  my  work  would  be  utterly  vain.  You  point  me 
the  means.  But  I  set  the  goal.  I  do  not  quarrel  with  your 
laws.  But  I  use  them." 

Hereupon,  of  course,  the  explaining  consciousness  makes 
one  retort  which  does,  indeed,  appear  to  be  crushing.  "  Re- 
alize your  ideals  if  you  will  and  can,"  it  says  ;  "  yet  what  is 
your  realization  but  a  mere  incident  of  my  cosmical  pro- 
cess ?  Your  realization,  when  it  comes,  will  be  a  natural 
phenomenon,  a  part  of  a  whole  fact,  like  the  rest.  I  shall 
explain  this  phenomenon,  and  show,  whenever  it  happens, 
that  it  is  nothing  new."  To  this,  of  course,  the  ethical  con- 
sciousness may  make  either  one  of  two  responses.  It  may 
say  :  "  Granted.  As  a  fact,  I  admit  that  you  are  right  My 
realization  of  my  ideals  will  itself  be  only  a  nature-process, 
involving  no  true  novelty.  I  admit  that  my  view  is,  in  the 
last  analysis,  illusory.  'Nature  is  made  better  by  no  mean, 
but  nature  makes  that  mean,1  just  as  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer 
quotes.  Nothing  really  new  ever  happens.  Hence  no 
ideals,  viewed  as  ideals,  ever  do  realize  themselves,  any 
more  than  eclipses  come  because  we  hope  for  them.  But 
still  our  human  experience  has  its  limitations.  Some  events 
seem  novel.  Some  desires  seem,  as  such,  productive  of 
what  nature  did  not  before  contain.  As  a  fact,  the  '  star- 
mist'  contained  everything — good,  evil,  possible,  necessary. 
But, '  Der  Mensch,  der  beti'eglicli  I''iihlende,  der  leichte 
Raiib  dea  mdchtigen  AugenblicksS  feels  the  thing  other 


134  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

wise.  I  view  the  world  as  it  seems  to  active  beings ;  and  so 
I  must  view  the  world.  Hence  you  have  the  truth ;  but  I, 
as  practical  common  sense,  must  live  in  my  necessary 
illusions ;  and  it  is  in  this  sense  that  I  remain  forever  in 
opposition  to  you — viz.,  just  as  an  inevitable,  if  illusory, 
point  of  view." 

This  is  what  the  ethical  consciousness  may  say ;  and  it  is 
saying  this  which,  to  follow  out  to  their  just  consequences 
the  views  of  many  writers,  ought  to  constitute  what  such 
writers  should  consistently  regard  as  the  true  "  philosophy 
of  evolution."  The  real  world,  thus  viewed,  is  one  of  rigid 
cosmical  law.  In  such  a  world,  nothing  essentially  new 
ever  happens.  If  we,  as  scientific  observers,  could  come  to 
comprehend  this  truth,  we  should  no  more  talk  of  a  genuine 
realization  of  ideals  before  unrealized  in  the  universe,  than 
we  should  regard  the  swing  of  a  pendulum  as  a  dramatic 
action.  The  pendulum  bob,  in  its  regular  vibration,  rises 
and  falls,  moves  right  and  moves  left,  moves  swiftly  and 
moves  slowly ;  yet  all  the  time  engages  in  but  one  de- 
scribable  cosmical  process,  which  involves  nothing  novel  at 
any  point.  So  with  the  cosmical  process,  in  its  wholeness. 
New  passions  and  desires,  as  well  as  their  significant  potency 
in  transforming  the  world,  are  and  must  be  illusions,  if  de- 
scribable  natural  law,  as  such,  is  universal.  From  this  con- 
clusion there  can  be,  upon  this  hypothesis,  no  possible  es- 
cape. For  to  explain  is  to  see  the  apparently  novel,  in  all  its 
essential  details,  as  an  instance  of  the  old,  whose  former  type 
is,  down  to  the  least  genuinely  true  element,  merely  exem- 
plified once  more  in  this  seemingly  novel  situation.  Either, 
then,  desires,  passions,  ideals,  are  not  subject  to  the  laws  of 
the  describable  and  necessary  cosmical  processes,  or  else  they, 
if  mere  incidents  of  a  describable  process,  are  nothing  new, 
and  bring  to  pass  nothing  new,  in  all  the  universe.  What 
has  been  will  be.  There  is,  then,  nothing  truly  ethical. 
There  is  only  the  cosmical.  This,  I  say,  is  the  only  possible 


NATURAL  LAW,  ETHICS,  AND  EVOLUTION.     135 

"  philosophy  of  evolution,"  if  natural  law  is  an  account  of 
the  absolutely  real  world.  Evolution,  as  a  process,  is  in  that 
case  the  mere  appearance  of  novelties  to  unwary  or  to 
necessarily  ignorant  observers.  It  does  not  and  cannot 
involve  anything  truly  historical.  But  meanwhile,  of 
course,  the  philosophical  evolutionist  of  this  type  could 
make  practical  concessions,  to  his  public,  to  himself,  and 
to  the  ethical  consciousness,  so  long  as  he  did  not  forget 
that  these  concessions  were  such — mere  accommodations  to 
human  ignorance  and  to  the  practical  point  of  view.  He 
could  say,  u  A  portion  of  the  cosmical  process — namely,  our 
own  voluntary  activity,  appears  as  if  it  were  ethical — i.  e., 
as  if  true  novelty,  genuine  progress,  effective  ideals,  historic- 
ally significant  passage  to  something  never  before  realized, 
were  there  present.  This  illusion  is  human,  inevitbale, 
and  even  useful.  When  we  write  on  ethics  we  have  to 
treat  this  illusion  as  if  it  were  true ;  and  to  do  so  is  as  harm- 
less as  to  speak  of  the  sunrise,  remembering  all  the  while 
the  cosmical  truth." 

Such  ethically  disposed,  but  consistent,  partisans  of 
natural  necessity  ought,  however,  still  to  admit  that  the 
ethical  process,  when  thus  abstractly  sundered  from  the 
cosmical  process,  of  which  it  is  all  the  while  held  to  be  a 
part,  does  indeed  appear  in  very  sharp  contrast  to  the  rest 
of  the  cosmical  process.  In  the  ethical  world,  illusory  as  it 
is  here  said  to  be,  it  still  seems  true  that  the  pendulums  do 
not  merely  swing,  that  the  old  does  not  merely  recur,  that 
the  creation  moves  towards  some  far-off  event,  divine  or 
diabolical.  One  now  has  to  talk  (although  such  speech  is, 
by  hypothesis,  but  illusory)  of  progress,  which  means  novel 
good  entering  a  world  that  has  thus  far  lacked  its  presence. 
One  has  to  treat  nature  as  if  she  could  be  made  better.  One 
looks  to  the  future  with  hopes  which,  for  many  evolutionists, 
become  rather  sentimental.  And  to  do  this  is  to  abstract 
from  the  supposed  fact  that  the  "  star-mist"  contained  it  all, 


136  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

and  that  nothing  essentially  novel  occurs,  or  will  ever  oc- 
cur. But  the  abstraction  is  in  sharp  contrast  to  the  assumed 
truth.  The  ethical  world  is,  when  conceived,  in  vehement, 
even  if  in  illusory,  opposition  to  the  natural  process ;  and 
Professor  Huxley's  discussion  will  have  done  great  good, 
in  so  far  as  it  leads  to  the  recognition  of  this  inevitable 
fact.  How  one  states  the  details  of  the  opposition  is  of 
small  consequence.  The  opposition  itself  is  deep  and  uni- 
versal. 

But  the  ethical  consciousness,  instead  of  thus  surrender- 
ing, might  decline  thus  to  abandon  its  assertions.  It  might 
say,  "  But,  after  all,  my  view  is  right.  I  not  merely,  in  the 
seeming  of  my  ideals,  contrast  my  illusions  with  a  supposed 
truth,  but  I  rightly,  and  in  the  name  of  truth,  oppose  my 
view  of  the  real  world  to  any  physical  view.  After  all,  docs 
experience  prove  the  real  universality  of  the  '  cosmical  pro- 
cess '  ?  Certainly,  experience,  as  such,  does  not.  That  noth- 
ing new  occurs  is  a  proposition  directly  opposed  to  the  seem- 
ing of  every  individual  experience.  Why  may  not  this 
seeming  be  well  founded  ?  Why  may  there  not  be  true 
novelties,  effective  ideals,  genuine  progress,  transformations, 
evolution  which  is  not  a  mere  seeming  of  growth,  spiritual 
processes  which  were  not  present  in  the  star-mist  in  any 
form?" 

To  these  queries  would,  of  course,  come  the  reply :  "  Su- 
pernaturalism,  this — base  supernaturalism."  "  But,  no,"  one 
might  retort ;  "  not  what  that  word  usually  suggests  to  some 
people,  but  merely  what  Kantian  idealism  long  ago  made 
familiar,  and  distinguished  from  all  Schwdrmerei — this 
alone  is  what  we  mean." 

As  a  fact,  the  assertion  of  the  universality  of  rigid  cos- 
mical process,  and  of  what  I  have  elsewhere  called  the 
reality  of  the  "  World  of  Description,"  is  unquestionably  a 
human,  and,  as  I  myself  should  affirm,  a  distinctly  social 
theory  for  the  interpretation  of  one  aspect  of  our  experi- 


NATURAL  LAW,  ETHICS,  AND  EVOLUTION.     137 

ence.  Take  human  experience  from  that  special  point  of 
view,  and  t hen,  indeed,  you  have  to  conceive  the  world  of 
experience  as  if  it  were  known  to  be  one  of  cosmical  pro- 
cesses, which  are  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever. 
In  that  world,  the  only  philosophy  of  evolution  is  that  all 
evolution  is  to  be  called  appearance.  The  only  ethical  pro- 
cess observable  is  one  which,  upon  this  hypothesis,  is  to  be 
conceived  as  unreal.  There  is  no  question  of  warring  against 
the  cosmical  process.  But  there  is  question  of  an  undying 
opposition  between  the  inevitable  ethical  consciousness  and 
the  hypothetically  true  cosmical  consciousness ;  for  the  one 
forever  looks  to  the  future  for  the  novel,  the  coming,  das 
Werdende,  conceived  as  the  possibly  progressive ;  the  other 
asserts  that  all  Werden  only  manifests  the  changeless  truth 
of  the  cosmical  process  itself. 

But  now,  the  other  view  of  human  experience,  the  one 
which  regards  the  universe  as  what  I  have  elsewhere  called 
"  The  World  of  Appreciation,"  is,  as  a  fact,  equally  true  to 
experience,  and  equally  inevitable.  For  nature  we  know,  as  a 
fact,  only  through  our  social  consciousness,*  and  the  social 
consciousness  is  ethical  before  it  te  physical,  appreciates 
more  deeply  than  it  describes,  recognizes  nature  for  reasons 
which  are,  in  the  last  analysis,  themselves  ideal,  and  is  con- 
scious of  novelty,  of  progress,  of  significance,  in  general  of 
the  human,  in  ways  which,  in  the  last  analysis,  make  the 
whole  cosmical  process  a  mere  appearance  of  one  aspect  of 
the  moral  world.  Yet  this  doctrine  is  not  "  supernatural- 
ism,"  because  the  true  opponent  of  the  natural  is  not  the 
"  supernatural,"  but  the  human.  The  "  cosmos,"  in  the  sense 
of  empirical  science,  is  a  conceptual  product  of  the  human 
mind.  Man  is  indeed  but  a  fragment  of  the  absolutely  real 


*  I  may  bo  allowed  to  refer  again  to  the  before-mentioned  paper  in  the 
Philosophical  Review,  and  to  the  later  ensaya  in  thin  volume  upon  Sclf- 
consciouancM,  Social  Conscioiuncas,  and  Nature. 


138  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

universe.  But  that  genuine  universe  of  which  he  is  a  frag- 
ment is  not  the  world  of  Description,  but  the  world  of  Ap- 
preciation— a  world  at  which  the  phenomena  of  nature  in- 
deed richly  hint,  but  which  they  do  not  reveal. 

It  is  true  that,  when  viewed  in  the  light  of  such  a  doc- 
trine, the  facts  of  evolution  get  an  interpretation,  not  here 
to  be  expounded,  which  does  away  with  much  of  the  oppo- 
sition between  the  ethical  and  what  had  seemed  the  cosmi- 
cal,  in  the  sense  in  which  we  have  so  far  used  that  word  in 
this  paper.  Meanwhile,  I  should  still  hold  that,  as  points 
of  view,  the  view  for  which  the  ethical  process  exists  at  all 
is  very  sharply  opposed  to  the  view  which,  in  the  sense  of 
physical  science,  deals  with  cosmical  processes  as  such. 
Call  the  whole  matter  one  of  phenomena  and  of  human 
opinion,  and  then  indeed  this  opposition  need  lead  to  no 
misunderstandings.  It  will  then  be  merely  one  of  points  of 
view,  no  assertions  of  ultimate  truth  being  made  on  either 
side.  But  if  it  be  a  question  of  a  philosophy  of  reality,  then 
one  must  choose  between  the  two  points  of  view,  or  else 
reject  both.  There  is  no  chance  of  reconciling  the  meta- 
physically real  and  ultimate  universality  of  the  so-called 
cosmical,  i.  e.,  physical  process,  or  processes  according  to  de- 
scribably  rigid  laws,  with  any  even  remotely  ethical  inter- 
pretation of  the  same  reality. 

The  questions  asked  at  the  outset  are  then  to  be  decided 
thus:  (1)  Conceive  the  "cosmical  process"  as  one  of  de- 
scribably  rigid  law,  as  all  explanation  in  natural  science 
does,  must  do,  and  ought  to  do,  and  then  the  "  ethical  pro- 
cess "  can  form  no  part  of  the  "  cosmical  process."  (2)  In 
essence  the  "  ethical  process,"  in  so  far  as  you  conceive  its 
presence  at  all,  is  utterly  opposed  to  all  "cosmical  pro- 
cesses "  when  they  are  thus  physically  conceived.  (3)  The 
nature  of  the  opposition  lies  not  in  any  world  of  "  things  in 
themselves"  at  all,  but  in  the  peculiarity  of  the  ethical 
point  of  view  which,  in  dealing,  as  both  this  view  and  its 


NATURAL  LAW,  ETHICS,  AND  EVOLUTION.     139 

rival  concretely  do,  with  mere  human  appearances,  esti- 
mates ideally,  and  desires  essential  novelty,  progress,  and 
the  thus  far  unattained  as  such ;  while  the  descriptive  or 
explanatory  point  of  view  conceives  its  purely  phenomenal 
world  as  if  it  were  known  to  contain  no  novelties  what- 
ever, and  nothing  ideal. 


VI. 

THE 
IMPLICATIONS  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 

THE  present  paper  is  an  effort  to  set  forth  in  brief  some 
of  the  evidence  for  an  idealistic  interpretation  of  the  nature 
of  reality.  My  argument  is  in  its  essential  features  identi- 
cal with  the  one  presented  in  a  chapter  on  The  Possibility 
of  Error  in  my  book  called  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philos- 
ophy, published  in  1885.  Another  statement  of  the  same 
considerations  is  to  be  found,  in  a  summary  form,  on  pages 
368-380  of  my  study  entitled  The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philoso- 
phy. In  the  latter  book  I  have  also  given  an  extended 
account  of  the  historical  relations  of  this  line  of  argument 
— especially  of  its  relations  to  Kant's  Deduction  of  the 
Categories,  and  to  the  philosophical  development  from 
Kant  to  Hegel.  That  these  relations  are  intimate,  needs 
here  no  further  express  declaration.  The  discussion  in  my 
chapter  on  The  Possibility  of  Error  was  criticised  in  some 
detail  by  two  French  writers — by  M.  Paulhan.  in  the  Revue 
Philosophique  for  September,  1885 ;  and  by  M.  Renouvier, 
in  La  Critique  Philosophique,  for  1888,  pp.  85-120.  To  both 
these  critics  I  owe  a  hearty  acknowledgment,  and  I  have 
tried  to  profit  by  their  objections,  though  I  cannot  here 
consider  them.  In  a  later  and  extended  form  my  view 
of  the  doctrine  here  in  question  has  so  been  expounded 
in  a  work  entitled  The  Conception  of  God,  published  in 
1897. 

140 


IMPLICATIONS  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 


What  is  it  to  be  conscious  ?  What  does  self-conscious- 
ness imply  ?  Such  are  the  questions  with  which  philosoph- 
ical idealism  begins.  It  is  by  examining  these  questions 
that  a  philosophical  idealist  hopes  to  get  a  clearer  notion  of 
the  world  in  which  he  finds  himself,  and  of  his  relation  to  this 
world.  A  successful  estimate  of  such  a  doctrine  can  never 
be  made  unless  one  comprehends  how  it  has  been  reached. 
It  is  the  road  that  here  determines  the  result.  In  vain  does 
one,  as  philosopher,  try  to  pass  the  gates  of  this  heaven  of 
theory,  and  to  get  the  beatific  insight  for  which  the  idealist 
hopes,  unless  one  has  first  followed  the  straight  and  narrow 
path  of  thorough -going  self-critical  reflection.  Whoever 
has  approached  his  idealism  by  this  road  will  no  longer 
imagine,  like  a  good  many  of  the  superficial  critics  of  ideal- 
ism, that  the  God  of  idealism  "may  be  safely  treated  as 
'  une  quantite  negligeable '  "  (to  quote  the  words  of  one  such 
critic).  The  careful  student  of  the  path  will  have  learned, 
as  he  went,  the  worth  of  the  goal.  His  own  insight  may  be 
still  very  incomplete,  but  he  will  know  that  the  truth  with 
which  he  deals  is  not  "  negligeable  "  merely  because,  like 
the  earth  in  Browning's  poem,  it  "keeps  up  its  terrible 
composure,"  and  declines  to  have  a  market  value,  or 
to  show  itself  in  the  precise  guises  which  tradition  had 
led  us  to  expect  it  to  wear.  For  the  idealist  whose  mind 
is  as  I  think  it  ought  to  be,  the  Infinite  is  unquestion- 
ably a  Person,  and  this  Person  is  as  unquestionably  the 
world-possessor.  The  finite  does  not  vanish  in  him ;  but 
he  appears  to  us,  although  very  imperfectly,  through  and 
by  means  of  the  finite.  Yet  what  it  is  and  means 
to  be  a  Person,  and  to  be  also  infinite,  and  to  be  the  world- 
possessor,  only  a  successful  philosophical  analysis  can 
hope  to  make,  in  general  terms,  clear.  It  is  useless  to 
approach  such  problems  with  only  our  accidental  and 


1  (_>  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

traditional  prejudices,   concerning   what  personality   may 
mean. 

It  sometimes  seems  to  me  that  to  many  minds  the  word 
"  person "  has  come  primarily  to  mean  one  who  can  and 
perhaps  will  on  occasion  strike  back  at  you  if  you  first  hit 
him ;  and  doubtless  the  notion  in  question  does  in  fact  re- 
veal a  certain  aspect  of  the  ultimate  truth.  The  world  is 
indeed  a  moral  order,  and  the  moral  law  is  a  hard  master, 
and  hard  masters  do  strike  down  rebels ;  and  to  many,  who 
would  reject  very  scornfully  the  crude  language  that  I 
have  just  used,  the  idea  of  God  and  of  his  personality  is,  in 
fact,  based  upon  an  unconscious  elaboration  of  just  such 
simple  categories  as  these.  I  do  not  question  the  relative 
value  of  such  categories.  We  have  in  childhood  to  get  our 
theology  in  these  terms,  and  we  never  ought  altogether  to 
forget  our  childhood,  or  to  ignore  the  sinewy  and  healthy 
truths  then  impressed  upon  us  by  tradition.  Only  such 
truths  should  not  pretend  to  be  ultimate.  Imagery  of  this 
kind  does  not  reveal  the  inmost  meaning  of  the  word 
"personality."  Ideas  of  this  sort  ought  not  to  be  treated 
as  final  tests  of  all  philosophical  definitions  of  God.  It  is 
perfectly  true  that  in  our  immediate  inner  experience,  in 
our  uncriticised  finite  self -consciousness,  fragmentary  as  it 
is,  we  mortals  learn  at  the  outset,  in  a  first  rude  example, 
what  personality  means,  and  it  is  by  reflection  upon  this 
rude  example  that  we  have  to  proceed.  But  we  need  not 
wonder  to  find  that  the  deeper  meaning  of  the  word  "  per- 
sonality "  is  only  to  be  got  at  by  a  long  study  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  rude  facts  themselves.  For,  as  a  very  little 
analysis  shows,  we  are  none  of  us  at  the  outset  able  to 
answer  sharp  questions  concerning  the  true  extent,  or  the 
nature,  or  the  limitations,  or  the  significance,  of  this  familiar 
reality  which  we  call  our  self-consciousness.  In  other 
words,  we  are  self-conscious,  but  very  imperfectly  so.  The 
question,  "  Who  am  I  ? "  is  not  easily  answerable,  yet  no 


IMPLICATIONS  OF  SELF-COXSCIOUSNESS.       143 

question  is  more  obviously  a  fair  one.  The  problem,  "  What 
is  a  person '{ "  is,  then,  not  to  be  solved  by  a  mere  glance 
within. 

In  seeking  after  God,  there  are  many  who  do  indeed  be- 
gin by  asking  the  question,  "  Who  am  I  ? "  but  who  thence 
proceed  by  offering  some  facile  answer,  such  as  the  well- 
known  one,  "  I  am  a  thinking  substance,"  or  the  still  more 
familiar  one,  "  I  am  a  being  possessed  of  free  choice  and 
volition,"  and  on  such  a  basis  a  theology  is  quickly  built  up. 
This  theology  will  therefore,  indeed,  take  a  comparatively 
naive  shape.  I  am  a  person.  God,  of  course,  is  another. 
For  I  have  free  volition.  That  constitutes  the  essence  of 
me,  and  so  of  any  person  you  please ;  and  this  fact  is  ob- 
vious, and  for  reflection  nearly  if  not  quite  ultimate.  Now, 
in  the  exercise  of  my  free  volition,  I  meet  resistance  from 
without  This  resistance  indicates  a  world  of  outer  objects. 
But  obviously  only  a  will  can  resist  a  will.  Hence  there  is 
will,  and  so  personality,  outside  of  me.  The  unity  of  law  in 
the  world  of  my  objects,  the  cleverness  of  the  manifold  con- 
trivances of  nature,  or,  better  still,  the  extent  and  the  wis- 
dom of  plan  which  I  see  exemplified  in  the  facts  of  organic 
life  and  of  evolution — all  these  things  assure  me  that,  in 
knowing  the  physical  world,  I  am  dealing  with  the  doings 
of  one  great  Person,  whose  creation  is  this  natural  order. 
He  is  free,  and  so  am  I.  He  limits  me ;  and,  so  far  as  I  am 
free,  I  limit  him.  We  are  two ;  and  hence  the  world  is  a 
moral  order.  Any  more  monistic  interpretation  would  be 
immoral,  for  I  should  not  fear  God  unless  he  were  another 
person ;  nor  regard  him  as  my  Father  unless  I  felt  his  resist- 
ance whenever,  in  the  exercise  of  my  free  volition,  I  push 
against  his  reality,  After  all,  it  is  the  muscular  sense  that, 
from  such  a  point  of  view,  becomes  the  chief  revealer  of  the 
divine  personality  to  us  finite  beings;  and  hence  those  who 
insist  upon  these  categories  love  to  exalt  their  "  dynamic  " 

character. 

11 


1-14  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

All  such  brief  sketches  of  the  views  of  opponents  have  of 
course  to  be  inadequate,  and  therefore  in  a  measure  unjust. 
It  is  only  to  show  in  what  direction  I  myself  should  look 
for  more  light  that  I  make  this  brief  hint  of  the  unreflective 
nature  of  all  these  notions  of  a  good  deal  of  current  the- 
ology. They  are  derived  from  a  very  simple  inspection,  so 
I  must  insist,  of  the  world  of  the  inner  life.  They  have 
their  relative  truth,  but  they  need  deeper  criticism.  "  Con- 
scious of  free  choice,"  "  conscious  of  outer  objects  resisting 
my  free  choice,"  "  conscious  of  dynamic  principles  beneath 
all  reality  " — how  profoundly  problematic  are  the  categories 
contained  in  each  one  of  these  phrases  !  What  is  it  to  have 
free  choice  ?  What  is  it  not  only  to  have,  but  also  to  know 
one's  own  free  choice  ?  What  is  it  to  know  outer  objects  ? 
What  is  it  to  know  one's  Self  ?  Yes,  what  is  it  to  be  con- 
scious at  all  ?  What  is  a  Self  ?  All  these  are  just  the  ques- 
tions of  philosophy.  Whoever  says,  "  But  I  do  know  all 
these  things,  and  there  is  the  end  of  it — no  matter  about  the 
how  " — such  a  person  is  perfectly  welcome  to  his  assurance, 
but  he  is  not  philosophizing.  It  is  precisely  the  how  that 
concerns  one  in  philosophy. 

So  much,  then,  for  an  indication  of  the  reason  why  the 
idealist,  knowing  at  the  outset  something  of  his  own  bit  of 
finite  self -consciousness,  but  longing  to  know  more,  declines 
to  state  d  priori  his  notion  either  of  Personality,  or  of  the 
world,  or  of  free  will,  or  of  the  nature  of  knowledge,  but 
aims  to  get  at  the  true  ideas  of  these  things  by  means  of  a 
better  analysis  of  the  implications  of  self-consciousness 

themselves. 

II. 

Our  questions,  then,  are  no  doubt  fundamental,  and 
worthy  of  scrutiny.  They  promise  rich  fruit.  Yet,  in  ap- 
proaching them,  we  must,  in  the  present  paper,  limit  our 
undertaking  pretty  carefully.  Amidst  the  wealth  of  these 
problems  we  must  choose  what  most  directly  concerns  us  in 


IMPLICATIONS  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.       145 

getting  a  general  notion  of  the  nature  of  the  idealistic  doc- 
trine. Let  our  choice  be  as  follows. 

Idealism  of  the  post-Kantian  type  is  distinguished  by  two 
especially  noteworthy  features.  It  first  involves  a  criticism 
of  the  inner  nature  of  finite  self-consciousness.  I,  the  finite 
thinker,  it  says,  must  be  in  far  more  organic  and  deep 
and  wide  relations  to  my  own  true  selfhood  than  my  ordi- 
nary consciousness  easily  makes  clear  to  me.  In  essence, 
then,  I  am  much  more  of  a  self  than  my  immediate  con- 
sciousness, as  it  exists  under  human  limitations,  ever  lets  me 
directly  know.  The  true  Self  is  at  all  events  far  more  than 
the  "empirical"  self  of  ordinary  consciousness.  This  is 
sure  because,  upon  examination,  one  finds  that  the  flicker- 
ing and  limited  self -consciousness  of  any  moment  of  my 
life  logically  implies  far  more  than  it  directly  contains.  I 
am  never  fully  aware  of  the  content,  or  of  the  meaning,  of 
my  present  self.  Unless,  then,  I  am  in  deeper  truth  far  more 
of  a  self  than  I  now  know  myself  to  be,  I  am  not  even  as 
much  of  a  self  as  I  now  suppose  myself  to  be.  In  other 
words,  it  is  of  the  essence  of  finite  consciousness  to  be,  in  its 
logical  implications,  transcendent  of  the  limited  character  of 
its  momentary  inner  contents.  This  is  the  first  assertion  of 
idealism.  Put  negatively  it  runs:  Finite  self-consciousness 
never  directly  shows  me  how  much  of  a  self  I  am.  There- 
fore finite  self-consciousness  never  directly  reveals  to  me 
the  true  nature,  or  extent,  or  limitations,  or  relations  of  my 
own  personality. 

The  second  feature  of  our  idealistic  doctrine  appears  in 
its  theory  of  the  relation  of  any  finite  self  to  what  we  call 
the  "  external  world."  The  idealistic  view  here  is,  that  if  on 
the  one  hand  the  self  of  finite  consciousness  is  in  any  case, 
by  implication,  far  more  than  it  can  directly  know  itself  to 
be,  on  the  other  hand  this  self,  in  order  to  be  in  true  relation 
to  the  outer  objects  which  it  actually  thinks  about,  must  be, 
by  implication,  so  related  to  these  outer  objects  that  they  are 


146  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

in  reality,  although  external  to  this  finite  self,  still  not  ex- 
ternal to  the  true  and  complete  Self  of  which  this  finite  self 
is  an  organic  part.  If  the  analysis  of  consciousness  has  first 
shown  me  that  my  true  Self  is  and  must  be  far  more  in  its 
essential  nature  than  I  can  now  directly  know  it  to  be,  the 
analysis  of  the  definition  of  "  my  world  of  objects  "  shows 
that,  in  order  to  be  my  objects,  in  order  to  be  external,  as 
they  are,  to  my  finite  thoughts  about  them,  "  my  objects  " 
must  be  such  as  my  true  Self  already  possesses — objects 
which  it  is  aware  of  because  they  are  its  immediate  objects, 
and  which  it  knows  to  be  mine  because  it  includes  both 
my  meaning  and  their  inner  essence. 

Uniting  these  two  features  we  have,  as  our  idealistic 
metaphysic,  this  result :  The  self  of  finite  consciousness  is 
not  yet  the  whole  true  Self.  And  the  true  Self  is  inclusive 
of  the  whole  world  of  objects.  Or,  in  other  words,  the  result 
is,  that  there  is  and  can  be  but  one  complete  Self,  and  that 
all  finite  selves,  and  their  objects,  are  organically  related  to 
this  Self,  are  moments  of  its  completeness,  thoughts  in  its 
thought,  and,  as  I  should  add,  Wills  in  its  Will,  Individual 
elements  in  the  life  of  the  Absolute  Individual. 

I  begin  here  at  once  with  the  first  of  these  two  considera- 
tions. It  is  a  familiar  assertion  ever  since  Descartes,  yes,  in 
fact,  ever  since  St.  Augustine,  that,  whatever  else  I  am  doubt- 
ful of,  I  am  at  least  directly  sure  of  my  own  existence.  I  am  I. 
What  truth,  so  people  say,  could  be  clearer  ?  I  exist,  and  I 
exist  for  my  own  thought ;  for  I  doubt,  I  wonder,  I  inquire 
— in  short,  I  think.  And  in  my  thinking  I  find  myself,  not 
as  a  possible  dream  of  somebody  else,  or  as  a  fiction,  or  as 
an  hypothesis,  or  as  a  matter  of  doubt,  but  I  find  myself  ex- 
istent for  myself.  Such  is  one  familiar  way  of  stating  the 
initial  assurance  of  human  thought. 

A  popular  misunderstanding  of  the  nature  of  idealism 
in  philosophy  supposes  that,  beginning  thus  with  his  own 
individual  existence  as  somehow  a  thing  very  much  clearer 


IMPLICATIONS  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 

in  nature  and  in  definition  than  the  existence  of  anything 
besides  himself,  every  idealist  as  such  must  proceed,  in  a 
solipsistic  sort  of  way,  first  to  reduce  all  objective  reality 
to  his  own  ideas,  and  then  to  find,  among  these  ideas  of 
his,  certain  ones  which  dispose  him,  on  purely  subjective 
grounds,  to  assume  the  existence  of  outer  objects.  It  is  his- 
torically true,  of  course,  that  such  methods  have  been  fol- 
lowed by  certain  students  of  philosophy.  It  is  also  a  fact 
tliat  such  methods  have  a  value  as  means  of  philosophical 
analysis,  and  as  preparations  for  deeper  insight.  As  such  I 
myself  have  made  use  of  them  more  than  once  for  purposes 
of  preliminary  instruction :  not  that  they  constitute  the  es- 
sential portion  of  the  teachings  of  a  metaphysical  idealism, 
of  the  sort  which  the  post-Kantian  thought  in  Germany  de- 
veloped (for  they  do  not),  but  merely  because  they  are  peda- 
gogically  useful  devices  for  introducing  us  to  the  true  issues 
of  metaphysics. 

As  a  fact,  however,  before  one  could  undertake,  in  a  se- 
rious fashion,  to  be  even  provisionally  and  hypothetically  a 
"  solipsist "  in  his  metaphysical  teaching,  it  would  be  need- 
ful to  define  the  Self,  the  Ipse,  whose  solitude  in  the  world 
of  knowledge  the  "  solipsistic  "  doctrine  is  supposed  to  main- 
tain. The  reason  why  in  the  end  our  post-Kantian  idealism 
is  not  in  the  least  identical  with  "  solipsism,"  either  in  spirit 
or  in  content  or  in  outcome,  is  that  the  definition  of  the  Self, 
the  answer  to  the  question,  "  Who  am  I  ? "  is  logically 
prior  to  the  metaphysical  assertion  that  a  being  called  "  I " 
is  better  known  than  is  any  being  called  "  Not-I."  This  as- 
sertion itself  may  be  true.  But  in  vain  does  a  doctrine  de- 
clare that  a  being  called  by  any  name,  x  or  y,  mind  or  mat- 
ter, not-self,  or  Self,  obviously  and  with  absolute  assurance 
is  known  to  exist,  and  is  more  immediately  known  to  exist 
than  is  any  other  being,  unless  the  doctrine  first  defines 
what  being  is  meant  under  this  name.  Self-consciousness 
can  only  reveal  my  own  substantial  existence  with  absolute, 


STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

or  even  with  merely  exceptional  clearness,  in  case  self-con- 
sciousness first  reveals  to  me  what  I  mean  by  myself  who 
am  said  thus  so  certainly  to  exist. 

Idealism,  then,  has  no  more  right  than  has  any  other 
doctrine  to  fire  its  absolute  assurances  "out  of  a  pistol." 
That  I  exist  is  at  the  outset  only  known  to  me  in  the  sense 
that  this  thinking,  this  consciousness,  of  mine,  is  no  un- 
reality. What  reality  it  is,  I  shall  not  know  until  I  shall 
have  reflected  long  and  with  success.  First,  then,  to  say, 
"I  clearly  know  myself,  but  I  know  not  certainly  anything 
beyond  myself,"  and  then  by  analysis  to  reduce  the  outer 
world  to  "  my  Idea,"  and  then  to  say,  "  Beyond  my  ideas 
I  can  never  certainly  go  " — all  this  method  of  provisional 
and  halting  reflection,  which  assumes  "  the  Ego  "  as  some- 
thing perfectly  transparent,  may  be  useful  enough  as  a 
propaedeutic  to  philosophy.  It  is  not  yet  thoroughgoing 
self-criticism.  Nor  is  it  upon  such  imperfect  reflection  that 
the  idealistic  doctrines  of  modern  philosophy  have  been  built 
up.  Fichte,  who  is  popularly  supposed  to  have  done  his 
work  in  just  this  way,  actually  made  the  Self  the  central 
assurance  of  philosophy  only  in  so  far  as  he  also  made  it 
the  central  problem  of  philosophy.  Its  very  existence  is, 
for  him,  of  the  most  problematic  kind,  so  that,  in  the  first 
form  of  the  Wissenschaftslehre,  the  true  Self  is  never  real- 
ized at  all,  and  exists  only  as  the  goal  of  an  unendliches 
Streben,  an  endless  travail  for  self -consciousness.  No  sooner 
has  Fichte  declared  at  the  outset  that  it  exists— this  Self — 
than  he  finds  the  very  assertion  essentially  paradoxical,  in 
such  wise  that,  unrevised,  it  would  become  absurd.  More- 
over, as  Fichte  insists,  the  natural  consciousness  is  far  from 
a  real  self -awareness.  "  Most  men,"  declares  Fichte  (Werke, 
vol.  i,  p.  175,  note) ,"  could  be  more  easily  brought  to  believe 
themselves  a  piece  of  lava  in  the  moon  than  to  regard  them- 
selves as  a  Self."  In  such  a  philosophy  the  cogito  ergo  sum 
no  longer  means  that  I,  the  thinker,  as  res  cogitans,  am 


IMPLICATIONS  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.        149 

from  the  very  beginning  an  obviously  definite  entity,  while 
all  else  is  doubtful.  The  first  word  of  such  a  doctrine  is 
rather  the  inquiry,  TFfeo,  then,  am  J?  It  is  the  Self  which 
needs  winning,  and  which  requires  definition,  and  which  is 
so  far  unknown,  just  because  it  is  the  object  of  our  reflection. 
Beginning  thus  our  consideration — asking.  What  is  the 
Self  whose  existence  is  to  appear  to  a  wise  reflection  as  the 
fact  surely  involved  in  our  consciousness  ? — we  find  of 
course  at  once  that  the  larger  empirical  Ego  of  the  world  of 
common  sense  is  by  no  means  this  Self  whose  truth  is  to  be 
thus  directly  certified  by  the  thinking  and  doubting  with 
which  philosophy  is  to  be  initiated.  /  exist  cannot  mean, 
at  the  beginning  of  our  reflection,  "I — Cains  or  Titus — I, 
this  person  of  the  world  of  common  sense,  calling  myself 
by  this  name,  living  this  life,  possessed  of  these  years  of  ex- 
perience— /  think,  and  so  I  am  immediately  known  to  ex- 
ist." For  the  Self  of  the  world  of  common  sense  is  inex- 
tricably linked  with  numberless  so-called  non-Egos.  He 
exists  as  neighbor  amongst  neighbors,  as  owner  of  these 
books  or  of  this  house,  as  father  of  these  children,  as  re- 
lated in  countless  ways  to  other  finite  beings.  As  such  a 
creature,  self-consciousness  does  not  at  first  immediately  re- 
veal him.  As  such  a  being  amongst  other  beings,  reflective 
philosophy,  at  the  outset,  must  ignore  him.  His  existence 
is  no  more  immediately  obvious  at  any  one  moment,  at  the 
outset  of  our  philosophical  reflection,  than  is  the  "lava  in 
the  moon."  When  Fichte's  opponents  accused  him  of  teach- 
ing that  Professor  Johann  Gottlieb  Fichte  was  the  only  per- 
son or  reality  in  existence,  and  that  his  students,  and  even 
the  Frau  Professorin,  were  only  ideas  that  Johann  Gottlieb 
was  pleased  to  create — such  critics  forgot  that  das  Ich  at 
the  outset  of  the  Wissenschaftslehre  is  not  named  Johann 
Gottlieb,  and  at  this  point  of  the  system  could  not  be,  and 
that  the  beginning  of  Fichte's  philosophy  ignores  the  Ger- 
man professor  named  Johann  Gottlieb  as  absolutely  and 


150  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

mercilessly  as  it  does  the  castles  on  the  Rhine,  or  the  natives 
of  Patagonia,  and  knows  as  yet  of  nothing  but  the  necessity 
that  a  certain  pressing  and  inexorable  problem  of  conscious- 
ness, called  das  Ich,  must  be  fathomed,  since  every  possible 
assertion  is  found  to  involve  the  position  of  this  as  yet  un- 
fathomed  Self. 

The  Self  which  constitutes  our  present  problem  is,  there- 
fore, like  Fichte's  Ich  at  the  beginning  of  the  Wissen- 
schaftslehre,  a  still  unknown  quantity.  Its  existence  we 
know  only  in  the  sense  that,  in  dealing  with  it,  we  are  deal- 
ing with  no  unreality,  but  with  a  central  problem  and  prin- 
ciple of  knowledge. 

How  much  of  a  Self,  then,  is  clearly  to  be  known  to  our 
most  direct  reflection  ?  If  we  look  a  little  closer,  we  next 
feel  disposed  to  answer  that  if  the  Ego,  as  directly  known 
in  consciousness,  is  not  as  yet  the  whole  empirical  Ego  of 
common  sense  called  in  case  of  any  one  of  us  by  his  proper 
name,  and  involved  in  these  external  social  and  personal 
relationships,  then  the  best  account  one  can  give  of  the 
immediate  subject  of  the  cogito  ergo  sum  is,  that  it  is  the 
knowing  Self  of  this  moment.  Here,  in  fact,  is  a  definition 
that  has  become  comparatively  frequent  in  philosophy.  I 
myself  cannot  accept  this  definition  without  modification. 
But  it  is  necessary  for  us  to  examine  it  ere  we  proceed  fur- 
ther. I  know  directly,  so  it  has  often  been  said,  nothing 
but  what  is  now  in  my  consciousness.  And  now  in  my 
consciousness  are  these  current  ideas,  feelings,  thoughts, 
judgments,  and,  in  so  far  as  I  choose  to  reflect,  here  am  I 
myself,  the  subject  in  whom  and  for  whom  are  these  mo- 
mentary thoughts.  This  is  what  I  can  directly  know.  To 
all  else  I  conclude  with  greater  or  less  probability ;  or,  again, 
the  rest  of  reality  is  an  object  of  my  faith,  or  of  my  practi- 
cal postulates.  As  for  myself,  I  know  myself  just  as  the 
knower  of  these  current  thoughts  of  this  moment.  Thus, 
then,  is  our  question  to  be  answered. 


IMPLICATIONS  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.       151 

Yet  once  more,  is  this  new  answer  quite  clear  ?  For 
how  much  does  the  present  Self,  the  self  of  this  moment, 
immediately  know  ?  And  does  that  which  the  self  of  this 
moment  knows  belong  wholly  to  this  moment  ?  As  soon  as 
we  try  to  answer  these  questions,  we  enter  upon  a  labyrinth 
of  theoretical  problems  as  familiar,  in  some  sense,  as  it  is 
intricate.  I  should  not  venture  to  weary  the  reader  with 
even  a  passing  mention  of  these  subtleties  were  not  the 
outcome  of  the  necessarily  tedious  investigation  of  such 
importance. 

I  am  to  know,  then,  "  this  moment,"  and  I  am  to  exist 
for  myself  here  as  "  the  knower  of  this  moment."  Very 
well,  then,  shall  I,  taking  this  point  of  view,  say  that  I 
know  immediately  the  past  in  time  ?  No,  apparently  not. 
I  have  a  present  idea  of  what  I  now  call  past  time.  That 
must  be  all  that  I  "  immediately  know  "  of  that  so-called 
past.  Do  I  immediately  know  the  future  ?  No,  again ;  I 
have  a  present  idea  of  what  I  now  call  future  time.  I  am 
limited,  then,  in  "  immediate  knowledge,"  to  the  present  in 
time.  This  moment  is  of  course,  as  the  present  moment,  to 
be  cut  off  from  past  and  future.  Very  well,  then,  how 
large  a  moment  is  it,  and  how  long  ?  Is  it  quite  instantane- 
ous, wholly  without  duration  ?  No,  for  I  must  surely  be 
supposed  immediately  to  know,  in  this  moment,  a  passing 
of  time.  My  psychological  present  is  a  "  specious  present" 
It  looks  backward  and  forward.  It  lasts  a  little,  and  then 
insensibly  glides  over  into  the  next  moment  Such  at 
least  seems  to  be  the  definition  that  this  doctrine  of  the 
"  present  moment "  must  accept  as  a  good  account  of  what 
the  "  present "  is. 

But,  alas !  the  present,  as  thus  denned,  is  only  the  more 
left  undefined.  This  gliding  "specious  present,"  when 
does  it  cease  to  be  present  ?  When  does  it  become  past  ? 
Where  are  the  boundaries  ?  How  much  is  there  of  it  ?  For, 
remember,  I  am  looking  for  the  immediately  certain  truth. 


152  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

I  wanted  to  know  who  I  am,  as  an  immediately  sure  reflec- 
tion shall  find  or  define  me.  The  answer  to  my  inquiry 
was,  "  I  am  the  knower  of  this  moment."  So  much  I  am 
to  be  quite  surely  aware  of  about  myself.  Well,  I  have 
tried  to  define  this  assurance,  and  of  course,  if  it  is  imme- 
diate assurance,  I  must  be  able  to  give  at  once  its  content, 
i.  e.,  to  define  just  what  is  contained  in  this  moment.  But 
unfortunately  I  at  once  find  myself  baffled.  And  as  an 
actual  fact,  if  I  look  a  little  closer,  I  shall  always  find  that, 
despite  the  assumption  that  I  do  know  only  the  "  present 
moment,"  I  cannot  tell  reflectively  the  precise  content  of  my 
present  moment,  but  can  only  answer  certain  reflective 
questions  about  the  consciousness  which  is  no  longer  quite 
my  own,  because,  before  I  can  reflect  upon  it,  it  has  already 
become  a  past  moment.  As  a  fact,  then,  the  assumption 
just  made  about  my  knowing  fully  the  content  of  the 
"  immediately  present  moment "  turns  out  to  be  an  error. 
For  I  know  not  now  in  full  what  it  is  that  is  present  to  me, 
nor  who  I  myself  am  to  whom  this  is  present.  And  I  find 
out  that  I  do  not  thus  fully  know  myself  at  any  present 
moment,  just  because,  when  I  try  to  tell  what  I  know,  what 
I  tell  about  is  no  longer  my  present,  but  is  already  my  past 
knowledge. 

This  problem  about  the  definition  of  the  "  present  mo- 
ment "  is  one  of  the  most  characteristic  of  the  problems  of 
self -consciousness.  Let  us  give  some  examples  of  its  curious 
complications.  Let  the  present  moment,  for  instance,  be  a 
moment  of  a  judgment.  I  judge  that  the  paper  before 
me  appears  extended.  This,  as  it  would  seem,  I  just  now 
know  immediately,  since  I  chance  to  notice  it.  But  ex- 
tension even  now  already  involves,  for  my  consciousness, 
all  sorts  of  consequences,  which  will  begin  to  appear  upon 
reflection.  If  extended,  the  paper  is  divisible.  In  so  far  as  it 
appears  to  me  as  what  I  call  paper,  I  already  begin  to  think 
of  it  as  something  that  I  could  fold  or  tear.  Yes,  upon  re- 


IMPLICATIONS  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.        153 

flection,  I  perceive  that,  even  while  I  saw  and  felt  it  as  ex- 
tended, I  all  the  while  "  sub-consciously  "  perceived  it  to  be 
smooth  to  my  hand  as  I  wrote,  and  also  saw  it  to  be  white, 
and  knew  it  to  be  partially  covered  by  my  handwriting,  and 
knew  to  some  extent  what  letters  I  was  writing,  and  had 
furthermore  in  my  mind  the  train  of  my  more  abstract 
thoughts.  All  this  mass  of  "  mind-stuff "  was  in  me  in  a 
more  or  less  latent  form.  What  portion  of  it  was  immedi- 
ately present  to  me  at  any  moment  during  the  writing  of 
the  foregoing  half-dozen  sentences  ?  Yes,  how  much  of  it 
all  is  even  now  immediately  present  to  my  consciousness  ? 
I  cannot  tell.  I  know  not.  "  This  moment "  has  ceased  to 
be  "this''  before  I  have  observed  its  content,  or  written 
down  its  name.  I  know  all  the  while  that  there  just  now 
was  a  present  moment;  and  all  the  while  also  I  am  just 
coming  to  know  this  now  flying  moment  That  is  the 
actual  situation.  My  "  immediate  knowing "  ceases  to  be 
immediate  in  becoming  knowledge,  and  the  knowledge  that 
I  now  have  crumbles  forever  as  it  passes  over  into  my 
immediately  present  state  of  feeling.  I  judge  what  just  was 
my  feeling,  and  feel  what  may  straightway  become  an  ob- 
ject for  my  judgment. 

Enough ;  I  shall  never  thus  define  in  any  precise  way 
who  I  am.  It  is  here  I  who  ceaselessly  fly  from  myself. 
My  moments  as  such  have  no  power  to  define  in  any  sharp 
fashion  their  own  content.  I  can  therefore  only  say  they 
must  actually  have  such  fleeting  content  as  a  perfectly  clear 
and  just  Reflection  would  judge  them  to  have.  That  alone 
is  what  I  seem  to  be  sure  of.  For  they  have  some  content 
What  it  is,  however,  I  can  endlessly  inquire;  but  I  can 
never  fully  and  at  the  same  time  immediately  know.  Un- 
less I  am  an  organic  part  of  a  Self  that  can  reflect  with  jus- 
tice and  clearness  upon  the  contents  of  my  moments,  these 
moments  contain  a  great  deal  that  exists  in  me,  but  for 
nobody.  So  much,  then,  for  the  first  result  of  our  inquiry. 


154  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

So  much  for  the  effort  to  define  the  "  Ego  "  apart  from  the 
"  external  world." 

Have  I  learned  anything  about  myself  by  this  weary 
and  baffling  process  of  reflection  ?  Yes,  one  thing  I  have 
learned.  It  is  the  thing  that  I  just  stated.  It  is  a  difference 
which  I  inevitably  find  myself  making  between  myself  as  I 
really  am,  and  myself  as  I  haltingly  take  myself  to  be  from 
moment  to  moment.  I  am  twofold.  I  have  a  true  Self 
which  endlessly  escapes  my  observation,  and  a  seeking  self 
which  as  endlessly  pursues  its  fellow.  What  I  really  am, 
even  in  any  given  moment,  I  never  find  out  in  that  moment 
itself.  I  can,  therefore,  only  define  my  true  Self  in  terms 
of  an  ideally  just  reflection  upon  the  contents  of  my  mo- 
ment; a  reflection  of  an  exhaustive  character,  such  as  in 
fact  I  in  my  momentary  capacity  never  succeed  in  making. 
I  must  exist,  to  be  sure,  for  myself ;  and  as  I  really  am  I 
must  exist  for  myself  only.  With  that  consideration  one 
begins  in  our  present  inquiry.  It  is  reflection  that  is  to  find 
me.  It  is  my  consciousness  that  is  to  discover  me,  if  I  am 
ever  to  be  discovered.  But  the  Self  for  whom  I  am  what  I 
am  is  not  the  self  of  this  moment,  but  is  thus  far  an  ideal 
Self,  never  present  in  any  one  moment.  To  repeat,  then,  by 
way  of  summary :  The  Self  is  never  merely  the  self  of  this 
moment,  since  the  self  of  this  moment  never  fully  knows 
who  he  even  now  is.  It  is  of  his  very  essence  to  appeal  be- 
yond the  moment  to  a  justly  reflective  Self  who  shall  dis- 
cover and  so  reflectively  determine  who  he  is,  and  so  who  I 

am.    For  I  am  he. 

in. 

Another  way  of  stating  the  foregoing  result  would,  there- 
fore, be  to  say  that,  unless  I  am  more  than  the  knowing 
and  the  immediately  known  self  of  this  moment,  I  am  not 
even  as  much  as  the  self  of  this  moment.  For  this  moment 
implies  more  consciousness  than  I  am  now  fully  aware  of. 
That  which  is  just  now  in  me  to  be  known  is  far  more  than 


IMPLICATIONS  OP  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.       155 

I  just  now  know.  That  is  the  paradox,  but  it  is  also  the  in- 
evitable fact,  of  my  inner  life ;  and  thus  I  already  begin  to 
see  how  large  may  be  the  implications  of  self -consciousness. 

But  herewith  our  task  is  by  no  means  done.  We  have 
studied  the  problem  of  the  Ego  viewed  apart  from  a  world 
of  "  external  objects."  What  we  have  learned  is,  that  the 
subject  of  the  cogito  ergo  sum  is  in  the  beginning,  strange 
to  say,  at  once  the  best  and  the  least  known  of  the  posses- 
sions of  our  knowledge.  I  cannot  doubt  its  existence.  But 
I  am  not  yet  aware  how  much  of  a  self  it  is,  nor  how  much 
it  truly  knows,  nor  whether  it  is  or  is  not  limited  to  a  single 
series  of  moments  of  consciousness  and  reflection,  nor  how 
it  stands  related  to  any  sort  of  inner  or  outer  truth.  Those 
who  have  begun  philosophy  by  saying,  "  The  self  at  least  is 
known,"  have  usually  forgotten  that  the  self  as  known  is  at 
the  outset  neither  the  empirical  Ego  of  the  world  of  com- 
mon sense,  nor  yet  merely  the  so-called  "self  of  the  one 
present  moment"  It  is  not  the  first,  because  philosophy 
has  not  yet  at  the  outset  come  to  comprehend  the  world  of 
common  sense.  It  is  not  the  second,  for  the  consciousness 
of  the  "  present  moment "  can  only  be  defined  in  relation  to 
a  reflection  that  transcends  the  present  moment ;  whilst,  on 
the  other  hand,  no  human  reflection  has  ever  yet  fathomed 
perfectly  the  consciousness  of  even  a  single  one  of  our  mo- 
ments. The  self,  then,  is  not  yet  known  to  us  except  as  the 
problematic  truth  exemplified  by  the  still  so  mysterious  fact 
of  the  cogito  itself.  Much  less  then  is  the  relation  of  the 
Ego  to  outer  objects  as  yet  clear. 

To  this  latter  relation  we  must,  however,  next  turn.  Per- 
haps there  we  shall  get  a  light  which  is  refused  to  us  so 
long  as  we  confine  ourselves  to  a  merely  subjective  analysis 
of  the  inner  life  of  this  baffling  Ego.  The  self  undertakes 
to  be  not  merely  conscious  of  its  own  states,  but  of  outer 
truth.  Is  its  power  in  this  respect  indubitable  ?  And  if  it 
is,  upon  what  is  founded  our  assurance  that  we  do  know  a 


156  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

world  of  real  objects  outside  the  Ego  ?  Possibly  in  getting 
a  solution  of  this  problem  we  shall  come  nearer  to  a  true 
definition  of  the  Ego  itself. 

The  only  way  of  answering  the  question  about  the  exter- 
nal world  lies  in  first  asking,  in  a  thoroughly  reflective  way, 
what  is  meant  by  a  world  of  objects  beyond  the  Ego.  It  is 
useless  to  try  to  find  the  philosophical  evidence  for  the  ex- 
istence of  a  world  of  outer  objects,  unless  you  first  define 
what  an  object  beyond  your  consciousness  is  to  mean  for 
you.  Amongst  the  numerous  definitions  of  the  meaning  of 
the  words  external  object,  I  may  therefore  choose  three, 
which  seem  to  me  of  most  importance  for  our  present  pur- 
pose, and  may  consider  each  in  its  turn.  The  third  will  be 
my  own. 

1.  "  The  term  outer  object  means  for  me  the  known  or 
unknown  cause  of  my  experiences,  in  so  far  as  I  do  not  refer 
these  experiences  to  my  own  will " — such  is  a  very  common 
account  of  the  nature  of  the  external  truth  for  the  Ego.  I 
need  not  expound  this  view  at  great  length,  since  it  is  so 
familiar  a  notion.  According  to  those  who  hold  to  this  defi- 
nition, it  is  somehow  perfectly  evident  to  me  that  my  expe- 
riences need  a  cause,  and  that  I  myself  am  not  the  cause  of 
all  or  of  most  of  them.  The  Ego  itself  is  thus  definable  as 
that  which  is  conscious  of  more  experiences  than  it  causes, 
and  which  therefore  looks  beyond  itself  for  the  causes  of 
most  of  these  experiences.  An  "external  object"  means 
just  such  a  cause,  known  or  unknown. 

It  is  strange  that  this,  the  most  familiar  definition  of  the 
nature  and  meaning  of  the  word  "object,"  should  be  the 
most  obviously  inadequate.  In  case  of  my  perception  of  a 
house,  or  of  a  hot  iron  when  I  touch  it,  or  of  a  wind  in  my 
face,  I  do  indeed  conceive  myself  as  in  relation  to  an  object 
which  is  causing  experiences  in  me.  But  most  of  the  exter- 
nal truth  that  I  usually  think  about  and  believe  in  is  not 
truth  now  perceived  by  my  senses,  nor,  as  I  think  it,  is  it 


IMPLICATIONS  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.        157 

now  in  any  causal  relations  to  me  at  all.  I  at  present  be- 
lieve in  it  because  I  "  trust  the  validity  of  memory,"  or 
"have  confidence  in  the  testimony  of  mankind,"  or  follow 
some  other  such  well-known  criterion  of  common-sense 
opinion.  When  I  read  my  daily  newspaper,  light-waves 
are  causing  retinal  disturbances  in  my  eye ;  but  as  for  me,  I 
am  thinking,  not  about  these  causes  of  my  experience,  but 
about  the  news  from  Europe,  about  the  Russian  famine, 
about  the  next  Presidential  canvass,  and  about  other  such 
"  external  objects,"  all  of  which  objects  I  believe  in,  not  be- 
cause I  reflect  that  my  present  experiences  need  causes,  but 
because  I  trust  tradition,  or  "current  opinion,"  or  the  "con- 
sensus of  mankind,"  or  my  own  memory,  or  whatever  else  I 
am  accustomed  to  trust.  Only  in  the  case  where  I  attend  to 
immediate  perception,  is  the  object  of  my  belief  at  the  same 
time  the  cause  of  my  belief.  Our  "  belief  in  the  reality  of 
an  external  world  "  is  concretely  definable,  then,  much  more 
frequently  as  our  belief  in  the  validity  of  our  memories  and 
social  traditions,  than  as  our  belief  that  our  experiences 
have  present  causes.  We  all  of  us  believe  in  the  future  of 
this  external  world  of  ours.  There  will  come  the  time 
called  ten  years  hence,  or  a  million  years  hence.  Something 
will  be  happening  then  among  the  things  of  the  physical 
universe.  That  future  event  is  an  "external  reality";  we 
all  accept  it  as  real,  however  little  we  know  of  it.  But  is  it 
for  us  a  "  cause  "  of  our  present  experiences  ?  We  are  sure 
that  such  an  event  will  come.  Does  that  future  event  now 
"  cause  impressions  "  in  us  ? 

Yet  more,  were  "my  object"  once  defined  as  that  x 
which  causes  my  inner  experience,  my  feeling,  /,  then  one 
would  still  have  to  ask.  What  do  I  mean  by  causation  ? 
Causation  is  a  relation  between  facts.  I  must  myself  have 
some  inner  idea  of  such  a  relation  before  I  can  attribute  to 
the  outer  object  the  character  of  being  a  cause.  By  hy- 
pothesis, ar,  the  object,  is  outside  me.  Its  causal  relation  to 


158  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

my  feeling  is  therefore  also,  in  part  at  least,  external  to  me. 
To  believe  in  my  object,  x,  as  the  cause  of  my  feeling,  /,  I 
must  therefore  first  believe  that  my  notion  of  causation,  de- 
rived from  some  inner  experience  of  mine  (e.  g.,  from  my 
own  consciousness  of  my  "  will "  or  from  my  exercise  of 
"  power "),  does  itself  correspond  to  an  objective  truth  be- 
yond me,  namely,  the  outer  causation  of  x,  as  bringing  to 
pass  /.  In  other  words,  I  make  x  my  object,  if  all  this  ac- 
count is  true,  only  through  first  holding  that  the  inner 
experience  of  a  relation,  called  "  causation "  in  me,  corre- 
sponds to  an  outer  truth,  namely,  the  external  causation, 
whose  validity  is  needed  to  give  me  an  idea  of  the  very  ex- 
istence of  x. 

But  this  means  that  there  is  here  at  least  one  external 
truth,  and  so  one  "  object  "  (viz. : — the  external  fact  of  the 
causation  itself),  which  I  believe  in,  not  because  it  is  itself 
the  cause  of  my  idea  of  the  causation,  but  because  I  trust 
that  my  idea  of  causation  is  valid,  and  corresponds  to  the 
truth.  And  it  is  only  by  first  believing  in  this  objective 
truth,  viz.,  the  causation,  that  I  come  to  believe  in  x  the 
cause. 

Hence  it  follows  that  even  in  case  of  immediate  sense- 
perception,  my  belief  in  the  external  object  is  always  pri- 
marily not  so  much  a  belief  that  my  experiences  need  causes, 
as  an  assurance  that  certain  inner  beliefs  of  mine  are  as 
such,  valid,  i.  e.,  that  they  correspond  with  that  which  is  be- 
yond them. 

2.  "  By  object,  then,  I  mean  that  which,  beyond  me,  re- 
duplicates,  repeats,  corresponds  to,  certain  elements  or  re> 
lations  of  my  own  ideas."  To  this  definition  the  foregoing 
one,  as  we  have  now  seen,  must  lead  us,  when  once  properly 
understood,  and  when  freed  from  the  inadequacies  thus  far 
noted. 

Here  is  a  definition  of  what  I  mean  by  "  outer  object " — 
a  definition  which  is  far  more  true  to  the  facts  of  conscious- 


IMPLICATIONS  OP  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.        159 

ness  than  was  the  foregoing.  My  belief  in  such  external 
objects  as  the  space  beyond  Sirius,  or  the  time  before  the 
solar  system  was  formed  out  of  the  primitive  nebula,  or  in 
the  existence  of  Caesar,  or  in  the  presence  of  monasteries  in 
Thibet,  or  even  in  the  things  that  I  read  about  in  the  news- 
papers, or  learn  of  daily  in  conversation — my  belief  too  in 
your  existence,  kind  reader — all  such  beliefs  are  assurances 
that  subjective  combinations  of  ideas  have  their  correspond- 
ents beyond  my  private  consciousness.  So  far  then  this 
definition  appears  adequate.  And  yet  it  is  really  not  enough. 
For  this  is  not  all  that  I  mean  by  an  outer  object  of  my 
thought.  It  is  not  enough  that  beyond  my  thoughts  there 
should  be  truths  whose  inner  constitution  and  relationships 
resemble  those  of  my  thought  For  the  world  of  my  own 
external  objects  is  not  merely  a  world  which  my  thought 
does  resemble,  but  a  world  which  my  thought,  even  as  it  is 
in  me,  intends  to  resemble.  Here  I  cannot  do  better  for  my 
present  purpose  than  to  repeat  language  that  I  have  used 
in  the  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  p.  370.  "  My  object," 
so  I  had  just  been  saying,  "  is  surely  always  the  thing  that 
lam  thinking  about.  And,"  as  I  continued,  "  this  thinking 
about  things  is,  after  all,  a  very  curious  relation  in  which  to 
stand  to  things.  In  order  to  think  about  a  thing,  it  is  not 
enough  that  I  should  have  an  idea  in  me  that  merely  re- 
sembles that  thing.  This  last  is  a  very  important  observa- 
tion. I  repeat  it  is  not  enough  that  I  should  merely  have  an 
idea  in  me  that  resembles  the  thing  whereof  I  think.  I  have, 
for  instance,  in  me  the  idea  of  a  pain.  Another  man  has 
a  pain  just  like  mine.  Say  we  both  have  toothache,  or 
have  both  burned  our  finger-tips  in  the  same  way.  Now 
in y  idea  of  pain  is  just  like  the  pain  in  him,  but  I  am  not 
mi  that  account  necessarily  thinking  about  his  pain,  merely 
because  what  I  am  thinking  about,  namely  my  own  pain, 
resembles  his  pain.  No,  to  think  about  an  object  you  must 
not  merely  have  an  idea  that  resembles  the  object,  but  you 
12 


160  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

must  mean  to  have  your  idea  resemble  that  object.  Stated 
in  other  form,  to  think  of  an  object  you  must  consciously 
aim  at  that  object,  you  must  pick  out  that  object,  you 
must  already  in  some  measure  possess  that  object  enough, 
namely,  to  identify  it  as  what  you  mean." 

If  this  be  what  is  meant  by  the  relation  of  a  self  to  an 
outer  object,  then  the  relation  surely  becomes,  once  more, 
highly  problematic.  Unless,  namely,  the  self  in  question 
has  already  its  own  conscious  idea  of  its  object,  it  cannot 
formulate  its  belief  in  this  object.  But  just  in  so  far  as  it 
has  its  own  conscious  ideas  of  the  object,  the  Ego  under  con- 
sideration would  seem  to  possess  only  inner  knowledge.  It 
defines  for  itself  the  object  of  its  belief.  The  definition  is 
internal.  The  self  appears  as  if  cut  off  from  the  object.  Its 
ideas  shall  be  "  its  own."  The  object,  as  it  seems,  is  beyond 
them.  The  only  relation  that  can  exist  is  so  far  correspond- 
ence. But,  alas !  this  relation  is  not  enough.  Another  rela- 
tion is  needed.  If  the  self  in  question  is  actually  thinking 
of  the  object,  it  is  already  meaning  to  transcend  its  own  ideas 
even  while  it  is  apparently  confined  to  its  ideas.  And  it  is 
actually  meaning,  not  self-transcendence  in  general,  but  just 
such  self -transcendence  as  does  actually  bring  it  into  a  genu- 
ine and  objective  relation  to  the  particular  object  with 
which  it  means  to  have  its  ideas  agree.  Am  I  really  think- 
ing of  the  moon  ?  then  I  not  only  have  ideas  that  resem- 
ble the  objective  constitution  of  the  moon,  but  I  am  actually 
trying  to  get  my  ideas  into  such  correspondence  with  an  ex- 
ternal truth  called  the  moon.  In  other  words,  whether  I 
succeed  or  not  in  thinking  rightly  of  the  moon,  still,  if  I  am 
thinking  of  the  moon  at  all,  my  thought  does  transcend  my 
private  experience  in  a  fashion  which  no  mere  similarity  or 
correspondence  between  my  ideas  and  other  realities  can  ex- 
press. The  true  relation  of  thought  and  object  needs  an- 
other formulation. 

Shall  we  attempt  such  a  formulation  ?    In  so  far  as  I  am 


IMPLICATIONS  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSXESS.        Id 

fully  conscious  of  my  meaning,  in  any  thinking  of  mine,  I 
am  confined  to  my  private  ideas.  But  in  so  far  as  I  am  to 
be  in  any  relation  to  an  object,  I  must  really  be  meaning 
that  object  without  being,  in  my  private  capacity,  fully  con- 
scious that  I  am  thus  really  meaning  just  this  object.  At 
the  moment  of  my  thought  of  the  object,  I  am  conscious  only 
that  I  am  meaning  my  ideas  to  be  not  merely  mine,  but 
actually  related  to  some  object  beyond.  Am  I,  however, 
actually  thus  related  to  a  particular  outer  object,  then  my 
present  consciousness  of  my  meaning  is  so  related  to  that 
which  is  truly,  although  at  present  unconsciously,  my  mean- 
ing, that,  were  I  to  become  fully  conscious  of  my  meaning, 
the  object  would  no  longer  be  external  to  my  thought,  but 
would  be  at  once  recognized  as  the  object  that  I  all  along 
had  meant,  and  would  be  included  in  my  now  more  com- 
pletely conscious  thought.  Complex  as  is  this  formula,  it  is 
needed  for  the  sake  of  expressing  the  facts. 

In  other  words,  the  only  way  in  which  I  can  really 
mean  an  object  that  is  now  beyond  me  is  by  actually  stand- 
ing to  that  object  in  the  relation  in  which  I  often  stand  to 
a  forgotten  or  half-forgotten  name  when  I  seek  it,  or  to 
the  implied  meaning  of  a  simple  and  at  first  sight  obvious- 
ly comprehensible  statement,  when,  as  in  studying  formal 
logic,  I  have  to  reflect  carefully  before  I  discover  this 
meaning.  And  thus  we  are  led  to  the  following  formu- 
lation of  our  own  definition  of  the  phrase  "  my  object." 

3.  "  My  object  is  that  which  I  even  now  mean  by  my 
thoughts,  although,  in  so  far  as  the  object  is  beyond  my 
private  conscious  thought,  I  cannot  at  present  be  fully 
<•< >nsrious  of  this  my  relation  to  it  Yet  the  relation,  al- 
though just  now  to  me  unconscious,  must  in  such  wise  ex- 
ist, that  a  true  reflection  upon  my  own  meaning  would  even 
now  recognize  the  object  as  actually  meant  by  me.  Such  a 
reflection  would,  however,  be  an  enlargement  of  my  own 
present  thought,  a  discovery  of  my  own  truer  self,  a  con- 


1C2  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

sciousness  of  what  is  now  latent  in  my  consciousness.  On 
the  other  hand,  as  a  consciousness  of  my  meaning,  if  com- 
plete, could  still  contain  only  thoughts,  my  object,  as  my 
object,  must  even  now  be  a  thought  of  mine,  only  a  thought 
of  which  I  am  not  now,  in  my  private  capacity,  fully  aware. 
In  other  words,  my  world  of  objects,  if  it  exists,  is  that 
which  my  complete  self  would  recognize  as  the  totality  of 
my  thoughts  brought  to  a  full  consciousness  of  their  own 
meaning." 

To  sum  up  both  aspects  of  the  foregoing  argument, 
whether  you  consider  your  inner  life  or  your  supposed  re- 
lation to  a  world  of  objects  external  to  yourself,  you  find 
that,  in  order  to  be  either  the  self  of  "  this  moment,"  or  the 
being  who  thinks  about  "  this  world  of  objects,"  you  must 
be  organically  related  to  a  true  and  complete  reflective 
Person  whom  your  finite  consciousness  logically  implies, 
fragmentary  and  ignorant  though  this  consciousness  of 
yours  is. 

Thus,  then,  the  essential  nature  of  our  idealistic  view  of 
reality  begins  to  come  into  sight.  I  know  not  directly 
through  my  finite  experience  who  I  am,  or  how  much  of  a 
personality  I  truly  possess.  If,  however,  I  am  really  a  self 
at  all,  as  even  my  fragmentary  finite  self-consciousness  im- 
plies, then  my  true  Self  is  aware  of  its  own  content  and  of 
its  own  meaning.  If  directly  I  cannot  through  finite  ex- 
perience exhaustively  know  my  own  nature,  I  can  examine 
the  logical  implications  of  my  imperfect  selfhood.  And 
this  content  and  this  meaning,  which,  as  I  find,  are  logically 
implied  by  even  my  finite  selfhood,  must  include  my  whole 
"  world  of  objects,"  as  well  as  the  whole  truth  of  my  inner 
life.  If,  then,  this  analysis  of  the  concept  of  Personality  be 
sound,  there  is  logically  possible  but  one  existent  Person, 
namely,  the  one  complete  Self. 

Yet  perchance  to  the  foregoing  argument  an  answer  may 
be  suggested  that  will  seem  to  some  readers,  at  first  sight. 


IMPLICATIONS  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.       163 

conclusive.  This  idealism,  it  will  be  said,  is,  after  all,  un- 
able to  give  any  notion  of  the  extent,  or  of  the  content,  or 
of  the  magnitude,  of  this  world  of  the  complete  Self.  What 
is  proved  is  at  best  this,  that  if  my  thought  is  truly  re- 
lated to  objects  outside  of  my  finite  consciousness,  then  in 
so  far  as  this  relation  exists,  that  is,  in  so  far  as  I  truly 
think  of  these  objects,  they  are  in  themselves  objects  pos- 
sessed by  my  true  or  complete  Self,  whereof  this  finite  con- 
sciousness is  only  an  aspect  or  organic  element.  But  per- 
haps the  assumption  that  I  ever  think  of  objects  beyond 
my  finite  self  is  itself  an  error.  How,  at  all  events,  can  I 
ever  do  more  than  postulate,  or  hope,  or  believe,  that  it  is  no 
error  ?  How  can  the  way  to  an  objective  knowledge  of  the 
objective  relations  of  my  finite  thought  ever  be  opened  to 
me  ?  How  can  I  ever  transcend  my  finitude,  to  know  that  I 
am  really  thinking  of  objects  beyond,  or  that  I  am  im- 
plicitly meaning  them  ? 

It  is  at  this  point  that  the  argument  concerning  the 
"  Possibility  of  Error,"  as  I  developed  it  in  my  chapter  so 
entitled,  in  the  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  becomes 
immediately  important  to  the  present  discussion.  If,  name- 
ly, in  my  finitude,  I  am  actually  never  meaning  any  object- 
ive truth  beyond  my  finite  selfhood,  even  when  I  most  sup- 
pose myself  to  be  meaning  such  truth,  then  one  must  accept 
the  only  alternative.  I  must,  then,  be  really  in  error  when 
I  suppose  myself  to  be  referring,  in  my  thoughts,  to  outer 
objects.  The  objective  truth  about  my  finite  consciousness 
must  then  be,  that  I  never  really  refer  to  any  objective 
truth  at  all,  but  am  confined,  in  a  sort  of  Protagorean 
fashion,  to  the  world  of  the  subjective  inner  life  as  such. 
I  think,  let  us  say,  of  the  universe,  of  infinite  space  and 
time,  of  God,  of  an  opposing  philosophical  doctrine  con- 
cerning these  things,  of  absolute  truth,  of  the  complete 
S«-lf  as  he  is  in  himself,  or  of  what  you  will.  Well,  these 
are  all,  it  may  be  supposed,  subjective  ideas  of  my  finite 


164  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

self.  It  may  be  an  error  to  regard  them  as  more.  No  ob- 
jects outside  my  finitude  correspond  to  them.  I  do  not 
really  mean  any  outer  truth  by  them.  I  only  fancy  that  I 
mean  outer  truth  by  them.  Could  I  clearly  reflect  on  what 
I  mean  by  these  objects,  I  should  see  this  illusion,  this  error, 
of  supposing  that  I  really  have  in  mind  outer  objects.  So 
our  sceptical  objector  may  respond  to  all  the  foregoing 
considerations. 

But,  once  more,  if  this  be  true  of  any  of  my  ideas,  if  my 
intent  to  mean  outer  truth  by  them  is  itself  an  illusion, 
then  under  what  conditions,  and  under  what  only,  is  such 
an  error,  such  an  illusion,  possible  ?  I  err  about  any  specific 
object  only  if,  meaning  to  tell  the  truth  about  that  object, 
I  am  now  in  such  a  relation  to  it  that  my  thought  fails  to 
conform  to  the  object  meant.  I  cannot  be  in  error  about 
any  object,  unless  I  am  meaning  that  object.  If,  then,  when 
I  think  of  infinite  time,  or  of  infinite  space,  or  of  the  uni- 
verse in  general,  or  of  the  absolute  truth,  I  err  in  supposing 
that  there  is  beyond  my  finite  self  an  object  corresponding 
to  any  of  these  notions  of  mine,  then  my  error  can  only  lie 
in  this :  that  whereas  my  finite  self  means  to  mean  outer 
objects,  my  true  Self,  possessing  a  clear  insight  into  what 
truth  really  exists  beyond  my  finite  self,  completing  the 
imperfect  insight  of  my  finitude,  discovers  that  what  I  take 
to  be  an  outer  object  is  only  an  idea  of  mine,  and  that  in 
the  world  of  the  complete  insight  there  exists  nothing  cor- 
responding to  my  intended  meaning.  But  thus,  after  all, 
we  surely  change  not  the  essential  situation  which  my  finite 
self  must  really  occupy.  For  still,  whatever  its  errors,  my 
finite  self  is  an  organic  element  in  the  correcting  insight 
of  the  true  Self.  My  notions  of  time  and  of  space,  of  truth 
and  of  the  universe,  may  be  as  imperfect,  in  all  specific  re- 
spects, as  you  please.  Only,  in  so  far  as  they  are  erroneous, 
the  complete  Self,  having  possession  of  the  complete  truth, 
corrects  them.  And  even  if  I  do  not  mean  to  mean  an 


IMPLICATIONS  OP  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.       165 

outer  truth  at  any  one  moment  when  I  imagine  myself  to 
be  in  relation  to  such  truth,  even  then,  this  paradoxical 
situation  can  only  be  the  objective,  the  genuine  situation, 
in  which  my  finite  consciousness  stands,  in  case  my  truly 
reflective  Self  detects  the  meaninglessness  of  my  finite  point 
of  view  in  just  this  case.  For,  in  the  case  as  thus  supposed, 
I  am  still  defined  as  objectively  in  error,  just  in  so  far  as 
what  I  mean  to  mean,  namely,  some  particular  kind  of  outer 
truth,  is,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Self  that  knows  my 
objectively  true  relations,  not  in  correspondence  with  what 
I  really  mean. 

Or,  again,  to  put  the  case  once  more  in  concrete  form :  I 
am  trying  to  think  of  an  outer  object.  I  conceive  of  that 
object  as  existent.  But  I  am  supposed  to  be  in  error.  I 
care  not  what  the  supposed  outer  object  shall  be — infinite 
time  or  infinite  space,  or  any  other  form  of  being.  If  I 
am  in  error,  then,  even  now,  unknown  to  my  finite  self,  the 
objective  situation  is  this,  namely,  that  the  world  of  truth 
as  I  should  know  it  if  I  came  to  complete  self-conscious- 
ness, that  is,  to  complete  awareness  of  what  I  have  a  right 
to  mean,  would  not  contain  this  my  finite  object,  but  would 
contain  truth  such  as  obviously  excluded  that  object.  In  any 
case,  then,  we  cannot  escape  from  one  assertion,  namely, 
the  assertion  upon  which  the  very  "  possibility  of  error " 
itself  is  based.  This  is  the  assertion  that  there  is,  even  now, 
the  existent  truth,  and  that  this  exists  as  the  object  of  my 
completely  reflective  Self. 

But,  finally,  does  one  still  object  that  the  completely 
reflective  Self,  the  possessor  of  my  complete  meaning,  and 
of  its  genuine  objects,  the  Self  aware  of  the  world  of 
truth  in  its  entirety,  is  still,  after  all,  definable  only  as  a 
possible,  not  as  an  actual,  Self,  namely,  as  the  possible  pos- 
sessor of  what  I  should  know  if  I  came  to  complete  self- 
consciousness,  and  not  as  the  present  actual  possessor  of  a 
concrete  fullness  of  conscious  insight  ?  Then  we  must  re- 


166  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

ply  that  the  whole  foregoing  argument  involves  at  every 
step  the  obvious  reflection  that,  if  at  present  a  certain  situ- 
ation exists,  which  logically  implies,  even  as  it  now  stands, 
a  possible  experience,  which  would  become  mine  if  ever  I 
came  to  complete  self-consciousness,  then  the  possibility 
thus  involved  is  ipso  facto  no  bare  or  empty  possibility, 
but  is  a  present  and  concrete  truth,  not,  indeed,  for  me  in 
my  finite  capacity,  but  for  one  who  knows  the  truth  as  it  is. 
Idealism  is  everywhere  based  upon  the  assertion  that  bare 
possibilities  are  as  good  as  unrealities,  and  that  genuine  pos- 
sibilities imply  genuine  realities  at  the  basis  of  them.  A 
merely  possible  pain,  which  nobody  actually  either  feels  or 
knows,  is  nothing.  Yet  more,  then,  is  a  merely  possible 
reflection,  which  nobody  makes,  an  unreality.  But  the 
foregoing  argument  has  been  throughout  devoted  to  prov- 
ing that  the  finite  consciousness  implies  the  present  truth  of 
an  exhaustively  complete  and  reflective  self-consciousness 
which  I,  indeed,  so  far  as  I  am  merely  finite,  never  attain, 
but  which  must  be  attained,  just  in  so  far  as  the  truth  is 
even  now  true. 

IV. 

Mere  outlines  are  always  unsatisfactory.  The  foregoing 
argument  has  been  merely  a  suggestion.  There  has  been 
no  space  to  answer  numerous  other  objections  which  I  have 
all  the  while  borne  in  mind,  or  to  carry  out  numerous  analy- 
ses which  the  argument  has  brought  more  or  less  clearly 
into  sight.  My  effort  has  been  to  make  a  beginning,  and  to 
lead  this  or  that  metaphysically  disposed  fellow-student  to 
look  further,  if  he  finds  himself  attracted  by  a  train  of 
thought  to  which  the  whole  of  modern  philosophy  seems  to 
me  to  lead. 

Such,  at  all  events,  is  the  path  of  philosophical  idealism. 
What,  now,  is  the  goal  ?  What  definition  of  the  complete 
Self  does  one  thus,  in  the  end,  get  ?  I  have  elsewhere  used 
the  tentative  definition :  "  The  Self  who  knows  in  unity  all 


IMPLICATIONS  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.       167 

truth."  I  have  accordingly  laid  stress  upon  this  character 
of  the  divine  World-Self  as  a  Thinker,  and  have  labored  to 
distinguish  between  this  his  fullness  of  Being,  as  idealism  is 
obliged  to  define  it,  and  those  customary  notions  which  de- 
fine God  first  of  all  in  "dynamic,"  rather  than  in  explicitly 
rational  terms,  and  which,  to  preserve  his  almighty  power 
as  the  director  of  Nature,  and  his  exalted  separateness  from 
our  weakness  in  so  far  as  He  is  to  be  our  moral  Judge,  find 
it  necessary,  first  of  all,  to  make  Him  other  than  his  world 
of  truth,  and  only  in  the  second  place  to  endow  Him  with  a 
wisdom  adequate  to  the  magnitude  of  his  "  dynamic  "  busi- 
ness. All  such  opposed  definitions  I  find,  indeed,  hopelessly 
defective.  But  in  insisting  upon  thought  as  the  first  cate- 
gory of  the  divine  Person,  I  myself  am  not  at  all  minded 
to  lose  sight  of  the  permanent,  although,  in  the  order  of 
logical  dependence,  secondary,  significance  of  the  moral 
categories,  or  of  their  eternal  place  in  the  world  of  the 
completed  Self.  That  they  are  thus  logically  secondary 
does  not  prevent  them  from  being,  in  the  order  of  spiritual 
worth  and  dignity,  supreme.  That  evil  is  a  real  thing,  that 
free-will  has  a  genuine  existence  in  this  world  of  the  Self, 
that  we  beings  who  live  in  time  have  ourselves  a  very 
"  dynamic "  business  to  do,  that  the  perfection  of  the  Self 
does  not  exclude,  but  rather  demands,  the  genuineness  and 
the  utter  baseness  of  deliberate  evil-doing  in  our  finite 
moral  order,  and  that  Idealism  not  only  must  face  the  prob- 
lems of  evil  and  of  moral  choice,  but  as  a  fact,  is  in  posses- 
sion of  the  only  possible  rational  solution  for  these  problems 
— all  these  things  I  have  tried  elsewhere  to  show  in  a  fash- 
ion which,  as  I  hope,  if  not  satisfactory,  is  at  least  sufficient- 
ly explicit  to  make  clear  to  a  careful  reader  that  the  God  of 
the  Idealist  is  at  any  rate  no  merely  indifferent  onlooker 
upon  this  our  temporal  world  of  warfare  and  dust  and  blood 
and  sin  and  glory.  To  my  mind,  one  of  the  most  significant 
facts  in  the  world  is  furnished  by  the  thought  that  all  this 


168  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

is,  indeed,  his  fully  comprehended  world,  and  that  if  these 
dark  and  solemn  things  which  cloud  our  finite  lives  with 
problems  are  in  and  of  the  universe  of  the  crystal-clear  Self, 
then,  whatever  the  tragedy  of  our  finitude,  our  problems 
are  in  themselves  solved  ;  while,  as  for  our  own  personal 
destinies,  they  are,  after  all,  and  at  the  worst,  part  of  his 
self-chosen  destiny.  For,  as  I  have  elsewhere  explained,  an 
absolute  Reason  does  not  exclude,  but  rather  implies,  an  ab- 
solute choice ;  while  such  a  choice  does  not  exclude,  but  of 
necessity  implies,  as  it  includes,  a  finite  and  personal  free- 
dom in  us.  That  this  our  moral  and  individual  freedom  be- 
longs, after  the  fashion  first  indicated  by  Kant,  not  to  the 
temporal  order  of  our  daily  phenomenal  world,  in  so  far  as 
it  is  merely  temporal  and  phenomenal,  but  to  a  higher 
order,  whereof  we  are  a  part,  and  not  unconsciously  a  part 
— all  this  does  not  militate  either  against  the  true  unity  of 
the  Self,  or  against  the  genuineness  of  the  moral  order. 
Every  being  who  is  rationally  conscious  of  time,  is,  by  that 
very  fact,  living  in  part  out  of  the  world  of  time.  For  what 
we  know  we  transcend.  To  live  in  time  by  virtue  of  one's 
physical  nature,  but  out  of  time  by  virtue  of  one's  very  con- 
sciousness of  time  itself,  is  to  share  in  the  eternal  freedom, 
and  to  be  a  moral  agent. 


VII. 

SOME  OBSERVATIONS  ON  THE  ANOMALIES 
OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS* 

IN  the  present  paper  I  shall  venture  to  lay  some  stress 
upon  certain  familiar  factors  whose  psychological  influence 
upon  the  growth  and  the  anomalies  of  self-consciousness, 
both  in  normal  and  in  abnormal  human  beings,  seems  to 
me  to  have  been,  from  the  purely  theoretical  point  of  view, 
rather  unduly  neglected.  In  particular,  I  shall  try  to  indi- 
cate how  these  theoretically  neglected  factors  may  help  to 
explain  certain  well  known  types  of  variation,  and  of  abnor- 
mality, to  which  the  functions  of  self -consciousness,  as  they 
empirically  appear,  are  subject.  Meanwhile  I  shall  of 
course  avoid,  in  this  paper,  any  positive  reference  to  the 
distinctively  metaphysical  problems  which  the  word  self- 
consciousness  easily  suggests.  The  philosophical  aspects  of 
the  problem  of  self-consciousness  belong  altogether  else- 
where. Starting  this  evening  with  the  mere  empirical  fact 
that  any  normal  man  has,  as  part  of  his  mental  equipment, 
conscious  states  and  functions  that  involve,  in  one  way  or 
another,  his  experience,  his  knowledge,  his  estimate,  or,  in 
general  terms,  his  view,  of  himself,  and  remembering  that, 
in  many  defective  and  disordered  people,  these,  the  func- 
tions of  individual  self-consciousness,  undergo  changes  of  a 
manifold  and  interesting  sort,  I  shall  try  to  illustrate 

*  A  paper  read  before  the  Metlico- Psychological  Association  of  Boston, 
March  21,  189$. 

189 


170  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

aspects  of  the  purely  psychological  theory  of  our  topic.  I 
speak  to  practical  men,  who  are  also  men  of  science.  I  need 
make  then  no  apology  for  introducing  here  a  problem, 
which,  whatever  its  difficulty,  is  full  both  of  scientifically 
attractive,  and  of  practically  important  elements.  For 
surely  the  alterations  and  defects  of  the  functions  of  self- 
consciousness  are  among  the  most  frequent  phenomena  in 
the  region  of  mental  pathology. 


In  its  inner  aspects  and  relations,  what  we  mean  by  self- 
consciousness,  in  any  one  man,  is  an  enormously  complex 
function  or  rather  a  little  world  of  functions.  But  this 
world  of  functions  is  centred  about  certain  well  known 
habits  and  experiences  which  at  once  serve,  not  to  explain 
it,  but  in  a  measure  to  begin  for  us  the  definition  of  our 
problem.  There  are,  namely,  in  any  mature  person,  certain 
established  motor  habits,  which,  according  as  they  appear 
to  be  intact  or  not,  enable  us  at  once  to  test,  from  without, 
the  relative  normality  of  whatever  belongs  to  that  which 
one  may  call  the  mere  routine  of  an  individual's  self-con- 
sciousness. There  are  also  certain  inner  experiences,  in 
terms  of  which  the  normal  individual  himself,  from  mo- 
ment to  moment,  can  feel  assured  of  the  apparent  natural- 
ness of  his  own  notion  or  estimate  of  himself.  A  mature 
man  whose  self-consciousness  is  normal,  if  his  means  of  ex- 
pressing himself  are  intact,  must  be  able  to  explain  "  who 
he  is,"  i.  e.,  he  must  be  able  to  tell  his  name,  his  business, 
his  general  relations  in  life,  and  whatever  else  would  be 
essential  to  the  practical  purpose  of  identifying  him.  Fur- 
thermore, his  account  of  himself  must  be  able  to  show  an 
estimate  by  no  means  adequate  or  infallible,  but  at  least  not 
too  widely  absurd,  of  his  actual  degree  of  social  dignity,  of 
his  personal  importance  and  of  his  physical  capacity.  He 
will,  to  be  sure,  quite  normally  estimate  his  value,  his 


ANOMALIES  OP  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.          171 

prowess,  or  even  his  social  rank,  not,  in  general,  precisely 
as  his  fellows  do.  But  this  sort  of  estimate  has  its  normal, 
if  rather  wide,  limits  of  error.  If  these  limits  are  passed, 
the  man's  account  of  himself  proves  the  presence  of  a  de- 
rangement of  self -consciousness.  Finally,  as  to  this  account 
which  the  normal  man  can  give  of  himself,  he  must  show  a 
certain  degree  of  correctness  as  to  what  he  can  tell  us  of  his 
body  and  of  its  present  state.  Here,  of  course,  the  limits  of 
error  are  very  wide,  but  are  still  pretty  definite.  A  man  is 
normally  a  very  poor  judge  of  his  internal  bodily  states. 
But  if  he  says  he  is  made  of  glass,  or  that  he  is  aware  that 
lie  is  a  mile  high,  or  that  he  is  conscious  of  having  no  body 
at  all,  we  recognize  a  disorder  involving  alterations  of  self- 
consciousness. 

Within  his  own  mind,  meanwhile,  and  from  his  own 
point  of  view,  a  man  normally  self-conscious  is  more  or  less 
aware  of  a  great  deal  about  himself  of  which,  it  is  notorious- 
ly hard  for  him  to  give  any  exact  account  whatever.  Yet  this 
internally  normal  self-consciousness  has,  at  any  time,  a  defin- 
itive, if  not  easily  definable  content,  which,  in  its  relative- 
ly inexpressible  complexity  of  constitution,  far  transcends 
what  one  expresses  when  he  tells  you  his  name,  his  place  in 
life,  his  status,  or  his  notion  of  his  bodily  condition.  This 
normal  inner  self -consciousness  involves,  in  the  first  place, 
what  we  are  now  accustomed  to  call,  from  a  psychological 
point  of  view,  masses  of  somewhat  vaguely  localized  bodily 
sensations,  which,  just  in  so  far  as  they  affect  our  general 
consciousness,  are  not  sharply  differentiated  from  one 
another.  The  origin  of  these  sensations  lies  in  the  skin, 
in  the  muscles,  and,  in  part,  in  the  viscera.  Moreover,  the 
visual  perception  of  the  body,  the  auditory  experiences  of 
the  sound  of  one's  own  voice,  and  yet  other  sensory  con- 
tnits.  including  the  more  general  sensations  of  bodily 
movement,  obviously  determine,  now  more,  and  now  less, 
the  content  or  the  coloring  of  normal  self-consciousness.  If 


172  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

any  of  these  masses  of  sensory  contents  are  suddenly  altered, 
our  immediate  self-consciousness  may  be  much  changed 
thereby.  Dizziness,  sensations  of  oppression  in  the  head,  a 
general  sense  of  bodily  ill-being,  a  flushed  face,  a  ringing  in 
the  ears — any  of  these  may  involve  what  we  primarily  take 
to  be  a  general  alteration  of  our  feeling  of  self,  and  only 
secondarily  distinguish  from  the  self  as  a  separate  and  local- 
ized group  of  experiences.  In  general,  the  more  sharply 
we  localize  our  sensations,  and  the  more  we  refer  them  to 
external  objects,  the  less  do  these  sensory  experiences  blend 
into  our  total  immediate  feeling  of  ourselves.  The  localized 
or  objectified  sensory  state  appears  as  something  foreign,  as 
coming  to  us,  as  besetting  us,  or  as  otherwise  affecting  us, 
but  not  as  being  a  part  of  the  self ;  and  only  a  relatively 
philosophical  reflection  regards  even  our  perceptions  as  part 
of  ourselves.  Our  more  naive  self-consciousness  tends  to 
regard  the  sensory  or  immediate  self  as  a  vague  whole, 
from  which  one  separates  one's  definite  experiences  of  this 
place  on  the  skin,  of  this  color  or  tone,  or  of  this  outer 
object. 

Yet  our  inner  notion  of  the  self  of  self-consciousness 
is  by  no  means  confined  to  this  cruder  appreciation  of  mas- 
sive sensory  contents.  In  addition,  our  normal  mature 
awareness  of  who  and  what  we  are  means  what  one  may 
call  a  collection  of  feelings  of  inner  control,  of  self-posses- 
sion, or,  as  many  would  say,  of  spontaneity.  If  such  feelings 
begin  to  be  altered  or  lost,  one  complains  of  confusion,  of  a 
sense  of  self-estrangement,  of  helplessness,  of  deadness,  of 
mental  automatism,  or  of  a  divided  personality.  As  a  fact, 
since  the  associative  processes  always  depend  upon  condi- 
tions of  which  we  are  not  conscious,  our  sense  that  we  can 
and  do  rule  our  whole  current  train  of  conscious  states  is,  as 
it  is  ordinarily  felt,  a  fallacious  sense.  But  if  we  cannot 
really  predetermine,  in  consciousness,  what  idea  shall  next 
come  to  consciousness,  but  are  dependent,  even  in  the  clear- 


ANOMALIES  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.         173 

est  thinking,  upon  the  happy  support  of  our  associative 
mechanism,  it  is  still  normal  to  feel  as  if,  on  the  whole,  our 
inner  process  were,  in  certain  respects,  relatively  spontane- 
ous, i.  e.,  as  if  it  were  controlled  by  our  ruling  interests  and 
by  our  volition.  This  sense  of  inner  self-possession  is,  to  be 
sure,  an  extremely  delicate  and  unstable  affair,  and  is  con- 
stantly interfered  with,  in  the  most  normal  life,  not  only  by 
a  series  of  uncontrollable  sensory  novelties,  due  to  the  ex- 
ternal world,  but  by  baffling  variations,  either  in  the  play  of 
our  impulses  and  ideal  associations,  or  in  the  tone  of  our 
emotions,  or  in  both.  Yet,  when  we  are  alert,  these  little 
interferences  continually  arise  only  to  be  subordinated.  We 
have  perhaps  momentary  difficulties  in  recalling  names  or 
other  needed  ideas,  of  an  imperfectly  learned  group,  or  we 
feel  equally  momentary  indecisions  as  to  what  it  is  just  now 
best  to  do,  or  we  find  our  attention  wandering,  or  our  emo- 
tional tone  disagreeably  insistent,  or  our  impulses  numerous 
and  wayward.  But  in  all  such  cases  we  can  still,  in  the 
normal  case,  "  keep  hold  of  ourselves,"  so  that  we  accept  as 
our  own  whatever  content  triumphs  in  the  play  of  associative 
processes,  and  find  our  essential  expectations  met,  from  mo- 
ment to  moment,  by  the  inner  experiences  which  form  the 
centre  of  the  mental  field  of  vision.  If  this  rule  no  longer 
holds  of  our  inner  life,  then  our  self -consciousness  begins 
to  vary,  and  we  suffer  from  confusion  or  from  other  forms 
of  the  sense  of  lost  inner  control. 

Thus  the  self  of  ordinary  self-consciousness  appears  at 
once  as  a  relatively  stable  group  of  unlocalized  sensory  con- 
tents or  contents  of  feeling,  and  as  the  apparent  controller 
of  the  train  of  associated  ideas,  impulses,  and  acts  of  atten- 
tion or  of  choice.  Of  course  these  two  aspects  of  the  self 
are  closely  related.  It  is  the  associative  potency  of  the 
ruling  feelings  and  interests  that  most  secures  the  fact  and 
the  sense  of  inner  self-control.  But  meanwhile  the  self  also 
•jeenis,  or  may  seem,  to  its  possessor,  much  larger  than  any 


174:  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

group  of  facts  or  of  functions  now  present  One  notoriously 
regards  the  present  self  as  only  the  representative  of  a  self 
which  has  been  present,  in  the  remembered  past  of  our  lives, 
and  which  will  be  present  in  the  expected  future  to  which 
we  look  forward.  Nor  does  self-consciousness  usually  cease 
with  this  view.  The  characters,  attributes,  functions,  or 
other  organic  constituents  of  the  self  commonly  extend,  from 
our  own  point  of  view,  decidedly  beyond  anything  that  can 
be  directly  presented  in  any  series  of  our  isolated  inner  ex- 
periences, however  extended.  When  one  is  vain,  one's  self- 
consciousness  involves  the  notion  that  one's  self  really  ex- 
ists, in  some  way  or  other,  for  the  thoughts  and  estimates  of 
others,  and  is  at  least  worthy,  if  not  the  possessor,  of  their 
praise  or  of  their  envy.  When  one  feels  guilty,  one  does 
not  and  cannot  abstract  from  the  conceived  presence  of  one's 
self  in  and  for  the  experience  of  a  real  or  ideal  judge  of 
one's  guilt.  In  all  such  cases  the  self  of  self -consciousness 
thus  appears  as  something  that  it  would  not  and  could  not 
be  were  there  not  others  in  the  world  to  behold,  or  to  esti- 
mate it,  to  be  led  or  otherwise  influenced  by  it,  or  to  appeal 
to  it.  It  is  now  from  such  points  of  view  that  the  self  of 
self-consciousness  comes,  in  the  end,  to  get  form  as  a  being 
who  takes  himself  to  have  a  social  position,  an  office,  a  pro- 
fession— in  brief,  a  vast  group  of  functions  without  which 
the  self  would  appear  itself  to  be,  relatively  speaking,  a  mere 
cipher,  while  these  functions  are  at  once  regarded  as  organ- 
ically joined  to  the  self,  and  centered  in  it,  and,  neverthe- 
less, are  unintelligible  unless  one  goes  beyond  one's  private 
consciousness,  and  takes  account  of  the  ideas  and  estimates 
of  other  people. 

Every  normal  man  thus  knows  what  it  means  to  be  a 
person  with  a  social  position,  or  a  dignity,  or  a  place  in  the 
world,  or  a  character,  a  person  vain  of  himself,  or  ashamed 
of  himself,  or  socially  confident  or  timid  about  himself,  or 
otherwise  disposed  to  view  himself  either  as  others  setem  to 


ANOMALIES  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.          175 

view  him,  or  as  he  fancies  that  they  ought  to  view  him,  or 
as  he  has  faith  that  God  views  him.  And  such  a  view  of 
one's  self  cannot  be  satisfied  with  any  group  of  inner  facts, 
however  extensive,  as  containing  within  it  the  whole  of 
one's  ego.  This  view  conceives  the  office,  calling,  dignity, 
worth,  position,  as  at  once  a  possession,  or  a  real  aspect,  of 
the  self,  and  as  a  possession  or  an  aspect  that  would  vanish 
from  the  world  were  not  the  self  conceived  as  existing  for 
others  besides  itself,  in  other  words,  were  not  the  self  con- 
ceived as  having  an  exterior  as  well  as  interior  form  of  ex- 
istence. 

The  self  of  normal  self-consciousness,  then,  is  felt  at  any 
moment  as  this  relatively  stable  group  of  inner  states ;  it  is 
also  felt  or  conceived  as  the  supposed  spontaneous  controller 
of  the  general  or  of  the  principal  current  of  successive  con- 
scious states ;  it  is  remembered  or  expected  as  the  past  or 
future  self,  which  is  taken  to  be  somehow  more  or  less  pre- 
cisely the  same  as  the  present  self ;  and  finally,  it  is  viewed 
as  having  a  curious  collection  of  exterior  functions  that  in- 
volve its  actual  value,  potency,  prowess,  reputation,  or  office, 
in  its  external  social  relations  to  other  actual  or  ideal  selves, 
e.  g.,  to  its  neighbors,  to  humanity  at  large,  or,  in  case  one's 
faith  extends  so  far,  to  God. 

And,  now,  just  as  the  immediate  self  of  the  mass  of  inner 
sensations  and  feelings  can  vary,  or  just  as  the  self  of  the 
sense  of  self-control  can  be  more  or  less  pathologically 
altered;  so  too  the  identical  or  persistent  self  of  memory 
can  be  confused,  divided,  or  lost,  in  morbid  conditions  ;  and 
so  too  finally,  the  self  of  the  social  type  of  self -consciousness 
is  subject  to  very  familiar  forms  of  diseased  variation.  The 
social  self  above  all  can  come  to  be  the  object  of  a  morbidly 
depressed  or  exalted  inner  estimate.  One's  social  prowess, 
position,  office  and  other  relations,  both  to  God  and  to  man, 
can  be  conceived  in  the  most  extravagantly  false  fashions. 

And  furthermore,  as  I  wish  at  once  to  point  out,  the  most 
13 


176  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

noteworthy  alterations  of  self -consciousness,  in  insanities  in- 
volving delusions  of  suspicion,  of  persecution  and  of  grand- 
eur, appear  upon  their  very  surface  as  pathological  variations 
of  the  social  aspect  of  self -consciousness.  Note  at  once  the 
possible  significance  of  this  fact.  However  you  explain  de- 
lusions of  guilt,  of  suspicion,  of  persecution  and  of  grandeur, 
however  much  you  refer  their  source  to  altered  sensory  or 
emotional  states,  they  stand  before  you,  when  once  they  are 
well  developed,  as  variations  of  the  patient's  habits  of  esti- 
mating his  relations  to  other  selves.  They  involve,  then, 
maladies  of  the  social  consciousness.  The  theoretical  sig- 
nificance of  this  fact  surely  seems  worthy  of  a  closer  con- 
sideration than  it  customarily  receives. 

Since  the  psychologist,  as  such,  can  afford  to  be  quite  in- 
different to  the  question  whether  any  real  being,  to  be  called 
an  Ego,  exists,  or  not,  and  since  he  is  therefore  still  less  in- 
terested in  the  philosophical  problem  as  to  the  forms  of  being 
which  a  real  Ego  can  possess,  in  case  it  exists — I  am  here 
very  little  concerned  to  answer  one  question  which  these 
latest  considerations  may  have  already  suggested  to  some  of 
you.  I  mean  the  question  whether  an  Ego  really  can  possess 
that  equivocal  sort  of  exterior  existence,  outside  of  its  own 
train  of  conscious  experience,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
social  sort  of  self-consciousness  seems  to  attribute  to  the  self. 
When  I  feel  humble  or  exalted,  abased  or  proud,  guilty  or 
just,  or  when  I  say,  "  I  am  in  this  social  office  or  position," 
I  seem  to  myself  as  one  whose  actual  nature  and  functions 
include  more  facts  than  can  ever  be  crowded  into  my  own 
consciousness.  For  unless  I  believe  in  my  real  relations  to 
my  neighbors  or  to  God,  and  conceive  those  relations  as 
somehow  a  part  of  myself,  I  should  have  no  material  out  of 
which  to  weave  my  notion  of  my  rank,  or  my  duties,  and 
of  my  external  importance.  But  whether  this  idea  of  my- 
self is  defensible  or  not,  from  a  philosophical  point  of  view, 
is  far  from  us  here.  It  is  enough  for  us  that  a  man  common- 


ANOMALIES  OP  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.         177 

ly  has  just  such  a  view  as  to  his  own  nature,  and  that  patho- 
logical variations  of  such  a  view  are  familiar  and  important 
phenomena. 

.  II. 

In  the  foregoing  sketch,  I  have  been  simply  reporting 
familiar  psychological  phenomena.  That  our  human  self- 
consciousness  involves  all  these  various  elements,  is,  one 
may  say,  agreed.  The  problem  is,  how  have  all  these  ele- 
ments come  thus  to  hang  together  ?  And  so  we  next  have 
to  attack  the  central  problem  just  mentioned,  i.  e.,  we  have 
to  ask,  in  a  purely  psychological  sense :  How  does  this  elab- 
orate mental  product  called  self-consciousness  get  formed 
out  of  these  numerous  elements  and  why,  when  once  formed, 
is  it  so  variable,  and,  finally,  why,  when  it  varies,  does  it 
vary  in  the  directions  so  frequently  reported  ? 

It  is  here  that  our  theoretical  knowledge  is  at  present 
so  poor.  The  collection  of  observed  facts  is,  to  be  sure,  at 
present,  considerable.  Readers  of  Ribot's  book  on  the  Dis- 
eases of  Personality  know  of  the  general  types  of  varying 
self-consciousness  to  which  attention  has  been  most  at- 
tracted. Loss  of  the  sense  of  personality ;  or  again,  the 
delusion  that  one  is  dead,  or  is  lost,  or  is  an  automaton  ;  or 
the  feeling  or  idea  that  there  is  a  foreign  or  other  self 
within  one;  or  the  attribution  of  one's  own  thoughts,  or 
acts,  to  another  and  wholly  external  person  or  persons ;  or 
the  alternation  or  the  apparently  actual  multiplication  of 
one's  own  personality ;  or  the  refusal  to  regard  one's  present 
self  as  identical  with  one's  past  self :  such  are  some  of  the 
variations  to  which  self-consciousness  is  subject,  in  addition 
to  the  before-mentioned  alterations  of  the  obviously  social 
type  of  self-consciousness.  But  when  we  ask  why  any  of 
these  alterations  takes  place,  we  have  so  far  only  one  un- 
questionable, but  theoretically  inadequate  answer,  viz. :  In 
all  such  cases  there  are  alterations  of  the  common  sensibility, 
or  of  the  memory,  or  of  both.  Now  one  sees,  without  doubt, 


178  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

that  self-consciousness  involves  the  common  sensibility,  in 
the  sense  before  indicated.  One  sees  then  that  if  this  core 
of  normally  stable,  vaguely  localized  sensory  conditions 
and  feelings  gets  altered,  one's  notion  of  one's  self  may  also 
naturally  change.  And,  not  to  leave  the  limits  of  ordinary 
experience,  one  knows  and  understands  what  it  means  to 
say,  when  these  central  masses  of  feeling  do  more  or  less 
change  :  "  I  feel  queer ;  I  feel  altered  ;  I  am  no  longer  quite 
myself ;  I  am  not  my  old  self."  By  a  little  stretch  of  imag- 
ination one  can  also  understand  such  a  delusion  as  "  I  am 
made  of  glass,"  quite  as  well  as  one  can  understand  any 
other  delusion.  For  here  our  dreams  help  us  to  see  our  way, 
and  we  have  only  to  suppose  that  a  certain  association  of 
ideas,  whereby  a  partial  anaesthesia  gets  interpreted,  becomes 
fixed,  and  exclusive,  in  order  to  see  how  the  delusions  as  to 
bodily  condition  or  constitution,  present  in  a  measure  in 
all  hypochondriacs,  can  assume  such  extreme  forms.  Just 
so  too  the  mere  assertion  "  I  am  lost,"  or  "  I  am  dead,"  is,  on 
the  face  of  it,  just  an  insistent  verbal  statement,  or  at  best 
an  inner  judgment  whose  exclusive  presence  in  conscious- 
ness is  due  merely  to  morbid  habit,  and  whose  meaning  or 
logical  consequences  we  often  need  not  suppose  the  patient 
to  develop  in  any  delusionally  definite  form  at  all.  These 
phenomena  involve,  where  they  are  alone,  or  are  segregated 
from  the  rest  of  the  patient's  life,  rather  pathological  sim- 
plifications of  the  contents  of  consciousness,  morbid  associa- 
tions of  sensations  with  simple  groups  of  words  or  of  ideas, 
than  any  other  processes.  So  far,  then,  we  see  some  light. 

But  now  the  case  is  otherwise  when  one  says  "  There 
are  two  of  me,"  and  proceeds  actively  to  develop  the  conse- 
quences of  this  inner  variety  of  self.  Here,  to  be  sure,  the 
phenomena  of  dreams,  and  of  the  commoner  forms  of  tran- 
sient delirium,  as  in  fevers,  bring  this  sort  of  doubleness 
within  the  remembered  experience  of  very  many  persons ; 
and  familiar  moral  and  poetical  statements  about  the  two 


ANOMALIES  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.          179 

selves  or  more  that  dwell  in  one's  breast,  assimilate  such 
experiences  to  those  of  normal  people.  But  one's  conscious- 
ness, in  such  cases,  throws  little  direct  light  upon  how  the 
phenomena  arise.  Sometimes,  to  be  sure,  in  delirium  their 
basis  is  plainly  hallucinatory,  as  when  a  fever  patient  sees 
himself,  in  bodily  presence,  standing  at  a  distance,  or  lying 
in  the  bed.  But  even  then  one  wishes  for  more  light  as  to 
the  question  whether  and  how  such  a  tendency  to  patholog- 
ical duplication  has  any  natural  foundation  in  the  under- 
stood habits  of  normal  life.  This  problem  seems  even  the 
more  insistent  when  one  observes  that  the  sense  of  the  in- 
wardly doubled  personality  often  arises  without  any  obvious 
basis  in  hallucinations  of  the  special  senses.  But  in  such 
cases,  our  present  theories  often  fall  back  again  upon  the 
variations  of  the  common  sensibility.  Yet  here  one  fails  to 
see  how  any  easily  conceivable  alteration  in  the  contents  of 
the  central  core  of  the  sensory  self  is  by  itself  sufficient  to 
explain  a  tendency  to  apperceive  that  self  as  double.  One 
does  not  doubt  the  existence,  in  such  cases,  of  an  altered 
common  sensibility ;  what  one  fails  to  follow  is  the  link  be- 
tween such  alteration,  and  the  new  habits,  of  judgment, 
or  of  apperception,  which  tend  to  get  formed  upon  this 
basis. 

But  I  do  not  wish  to  burden  you  with  a  mere  enumera- 
tion of  problems,  and  I  will  not  here  further  dwell  upon  the 
inadequacies  of  the  current  theories  of  the  factors  of  self- 
consciousness,  whether  these  theories  lay  stress  upon  the 
common  sensibility,  or  upon  the  memory,  as  the  principal 
factor  in  their  explanations  of  the  variations  of  the  ego.  It 
is  only  necessary  to  show  that,  while  both  the  common  sen- 
sibility and  the  memory  are  certainly  largely  concerned  in 
the  constitution  of  the  self,  the  problem  of  self-consciousness 
is  not  thus  to  be  fully  solved.  One  must  look  to  other  fac- 
tors as  well.  One  has  in  fact  only  to  remember  that  some 
large  alterations  of  the  common  sensibility  seem  to  involve 


180  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

very  little  change  of  self-consciousness  at  all,  in  order  to  see 
how  complex  the  problem  is. 

And  now,  as  to  the  real  problem  itself,  it  is  surely  one 
relating  to  the  origin,  to  the  nature  and  to  the  variations,  of 
a  certain  important  collection  of  mental  habits.  What  are 
these  habits  ?  How  do  they  arise  ?  I  insist,  a  mere  catalogue 
of  the  contents  of  self -consciousness  helps  us  little,  unless  we 
can  interpret  the  facts  in  terms  of  the  known  laws  of  habit. 
For  a  man  is  self-conscious  in  so  far  as  he  has  formed  habits 
of  regarding,  remembering,  estimating,  and  guiding  himself. 
And  now  whenever  these  habits  are  in  play,  they  all  of  them, 
as  I  must  next  insist,  have  a  common  and  noteworthy  char- 
acter. If  a  man  regards  himself,  as  this  individual  Ego,  he 
always  sets  over  against  his  Ego  something  else,  viz. :  some 
particular  object  represented  by  a  portion  of  his  conscious 
states,  and  known  to  him  as  his  then  present  and  interesting 
non-Ego.  This  psychological  non-Ego,  represented  in  one's 
conscious  states,  is  of  course  very  seldom  the  universe,  or 
anything  in  the  least  abstract.  And,  for  the  rest,  it  is  a  very 
varying  non-Ego.  And  now,  it  is  very  significant  that  our 
mental  habits  are  such  that  the  Ego  of  which  one  is  conscious 
varies  with  the  particular  non-Ego  that  one  then  and  there 
consciously  seems  to  encounter.  If  I  am  in  a  fight,  my  con- 
sciously presented  non-Ego  is  my  idea  of  my  opponent.  Con- 
sequently, I  am  then  conscious  of  myself  as  of  somebody 
fighting  him.  If  I  am  in  love,  my  non-Ego  is  thought  of  as 
my  beloved,  and  my  Self,  however  much  the  chord  of  it  pre- 
tends, trembling,  to  pass  in  music  out  of  sight,  is  the  Self  of 
my  passion.  If  I  strut  about  in  fancied  dignity,  my  non-Ego 
is  the  world  of  people  who,  as  I  fondly  hope,  are  admiring 
me.  Accordingly,  I  then  exist,  for  myself,  as  the  beheld  of 
all  beholders,  the  model.  If  I  sink  in  despair  and  self-abase- 
ment, my  non-Ego  is  the  world  of  the  conceived  real  or  ideal 
people  whose  imagined  contempt  interests,  but  overwhelms 
me,  and  I  exist  for  myself  as  the  despised  Ego,  worthy  of 


ANOMALIES  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.          181 

their  ill  will.  When  I  speak,  my  non-Ego  is  the  person  or 
persons  addressed,  and  my  Ego  is  the  speaker.  If  I  sud- 
denly note  that,  though  I  talk,  nobody  marks  me,  both  the 
non-Ego  and  my  Ego  dramatically  change  together  in  my 
consciousness.  These  two  contents  of  consciousness,  then, 
are  psychologically  linked.  Alone,  I  am  so  far  not  myself. 
My  consciousness  of  my  Ego  is  a  consciousness  colored  by 
my  conceived  relations  to  my  endlessly  changing  conscious- 
ness of  a  non-Ego.  And  notice,  I  speak  here  as  little  of  any 
metaphysically  real  non-Ego  as  I  speak  of  any  metaphysic- 
ally real  Ego.  The  whole  question  is  here  one  of  mental 
states  and  of  the  actual  habits  of  their  grouping,  not  of  rela- 
tive, nor  yet  of  real  existences  outside  of  consciousness.  I 
point  out  merely  the  fact  that,  according  as  one  chances  to 
conceive  thus  or  thus  the  non-Ego  of  his  strongest  current 
interest,  even  so,  on  the  other  hand,  he  conceives  his  Ego 
thus  or  thus,  viz.,  as  something  related  to  this  non-Ego,  op- 
posed to  it,  concerned  in  it,  possessor  of  it,  crushed  by  it, 
desirous  of  winning  it,  or  however  the  play  of  habit  and  of 
interest  makes  the  thing  seem.  Here,  I  think,  lies  the  real 
key  to  all  the  variations  of  Self-consciousness,  whether  their 
conditions  involve  the  common  sensibility  or  not. 

The  psychological  problem  of  self -consciousness  reduces 
itself,  then,  to  the  following  form.  One  must  ask :  How  has 
one  come  to  form  all  these  habits  of  drawing  a  boundary,  in 
one's  consciousness,  between  mental  states  that  represent  a 
non-Ego,  and  mental  states  that  clump  themselves  together 
into  the  central  object  called  the  Ego  ?  One  must  also  ask  : 
Whence  comes  all  this  material  for  variation,  whereby  the 
content  called  the  Ego  shifts  endlessly  as  the  content  called 
the  non-Ego  alters  ?  And  one  must  further  inquire :  How 
do  the  constitution  and  the  variations  of  the  Ego  get  that 
intimate  relation  to  the  sensations  of  the  common  sensibility 
upon  which  we  have  laid  stress  from  the  start  ? 

Now  to  all  these  questions,  as  I  hold,  the  recent  study  of 


182  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

childhood  has  tended  to  suggest  at  least  a  plausible  answer. 
The  substantial  basis  for  the  answer  that  I  shall  suggest  has 
been  reached,  pretty  independently,  by  my  friend  Professor 
Baldwin,  of  Princeton,  and  by  myself.  Professor  Baldwin 
has  given  to  some  aspects  of  the  matter,  so  far  as  concerns 
child  life,  a  much  fuller  working  out  than  I  have  done, 
both  in  his  earlier  papers  and  in  his  recently  published 
book  called  Mental  Development  in  the  Child  and  the 
Race.  But  the  application  of  these  theoretical  considera- 
tions to  the  study  of  the  pathological  variations  of  self -con- 
sciousness in  the  present  paper  is,  I  think,  new. 

The  early  intellectual  life  of  the  child  is  lost  to  us  in  ob- 
scurity, despite  numerous  recent  observations.  But  we  are 
clear  that  the  infant,  in  the  first  months  of  life,  has  nothing 
that  we  should  call  self -consciousness.  The  first  clear  evi- 
dence that  we  get  of  the  presence  of  a  form  of  self-conscious- 
ness intelligible  to  us  comes  when  the  infant  begins  to  be  ob- 
servantly imitative  of  the  acts,  and  later  of  the  words,  of  the 
people  about  it.  In  other  words,  the  first  Ego  of  the  child's 
intelligible  consciousness  appears  to  be,  in  its  own  mind, 
set  over  against  a  non-Ego  that,  to  the  child,  is  made  up 
of  the  perceived  fascinating,  and,  to  its  feeling,  more  or  less 
significant,  deeds  of  the  persons  in  its  environment.  From 
this  time  on,  up  to  seven  or  eight  years  of  age,  any  normal 
child  remains  persistently,  although  perhaps  very  selective- 
ly, imitative,  of  deeds,  of  habits,  of  games,  of  customs,  and 
often  of  highly  ideal  and  perhaps  quite  imaginary  models, 
such  as  are  suggested  to  it  by  fairy-stories  and  other  such 
material.  As  one  follows  the  growth  of  these  imitative  tend- 
encies, from  their  initial  and  quite  literal  stages,  through 
those  stages  of  elaborate  impersonation  and  of  playful, 
originally  colored,  often  enormously  insistent  games,  in 
which  the  child  follows  all  sorts  of  real  and  fantastic  models, 
one  is  struck  by  the  fact  that  any  normal  child  leads,  rela- 
tively speaking,  two  lives,  one  naive,  intensely  egoistic  from 


ANOMALIES  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.         183 

our  point  of  view,  but  relatively  free  from  any  marked  self- 
consciousness  in  the  child's  own  mind,  while  his  other  life  is 
the  life  in  which  he  develops  his  conscious  ideas  and  views 
of  himself  as  a  person.  The  relatively  naive  life  is  the  life 
of  his  childish  appetites  and  passions;  the  relatively  self- 
conscious  life  is  the  life  of  his  imitations  and  dramatic  im- 
personations, of  his  poses  and  devices,  of  his  games,  and  of 
his  proudly  fantastic  skill,  and  of  the  countless  social  habits 
and  attitudes  that  spring  up  from  this  source.  The  two  lives 
mingle  and  cross  in  all  sorts  of  ways.  But  the  child  who 
merely  eats,  cries,  and  enjoys  his  physical  well-being,  is  not 
just  then  self-conscious  as  is  the  child  who  plays  horse,  or 
hero,  or  doctor,  or  who  carefully  tries  to  follow  a  model  as  he 
draws,  or  to  invent  a  trick  as  good  as  one  that  he  has  seen. 
The  latter  child,  however,  is  essentially  imitative,  first  of 
persons,  then  of  ideas,  then  of  the  facts  of  the  physical  world 
as  such.  But  the  former  child  is  simply  the  creature  of 
natural  impulses  and  passions,  and  would  never  come  to 
self-consciousness,  in  our  sense,  if  his  life  were  not  gradu- 
ally moulded  by  the  elaborate  habits  which  the  imitative 
child  constantly  introduces. 

Now  the  psychological  importance  of  imitation  lies  large- 
ly in  the  fact,  that  in  so  far  as  a  child  imitates,  he  gets  ideas 
about  the  inner  meaning  or  intent  of  the  deeds  that  he  imi- 
tates, and  so  gets  acquainted  with  what  he  early  finds  to  be 
the  minds  of  other  people.  The  child  that  repeats  your 
words,  slowly  learns  what  they  mean.  The  child  that  uses 
scissors,  pencil,  or  other  tools  after  you,  learns,  as  he  imi- 
tates, what  cutting  means,  and  what  drawing,  or  other  such 
doings.  And  as  he  thus  learns,  he  gets  presented  to  his  own 
consciousness  contents,  which  he  regards  as  standing  for 
those  of  your  mind.  The  experienced  interesting  outcome 
of  an  imitated  deed,  is  for  the  child  the  obvious  meaning  of 
that  deed,  for  you,  as  you  did  it.  But  he  does  not  get  these 
contents— these  glimpses  of  your  meaning— he  does  not  get 


184  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

them,  at  first,  very  easily.  He  gets  them  by  persistently 
watching  you,  listening  to  you,  playing  with  you,  trying  to 
be  like  you — all  activities  that  for  him  involve  muscular  sen- 
sations, emotional  concerns,  and  still  other  variations  of  his 
common  sensibility.  These  efforts  of  his  to  grasp  your  mean- 
ing are  marked  and  often  delightful  incidents  of  his  con- 
sciousness. He  returns  over  and  over  to  his  favorite  games 
with  you.  He  encounters  every  time  your  meaning,  and 
he  sets  over  against  it  those  experiences  of  his  own  doings, 
whereby  he  comes  to  participate  in  your  meaning.  Here 
now  the  child  always  has  present  to  him  two  sets  of  contents, 
both  fascinating,  each  setting  the  other  off  sharply  by  con- 
trast, while  the  contrast  itself  establishes  the  boundary  be- 
tween them.  The  first  set  of  contents  are  his  perceptions  of 
your  deeds,  and  his  representation  of  your  discovered  mean- 
ing in  these  deeds.  The  second  set  of  contents  are  his  own 
imitative  acts  themselves,  as  perceived  by  himself,  these  acts, 
and  his  delights  in  them.  The  first  set  of  contents  depend 
upon  you.  The  child  feels  them  to  be  uncontrollable.  As 
perceptions,  and  as  representations,  these  contents  do  not 
get  closely  linked  to  the  child's  common  sensibility.  They 
stand  off  as  external  although  welcome  intruders.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  other  set  of  contents,  the  child's  own  newly 
discovered  powers,  due  to  his  imitation,  are  closely  centred 
about  his  common  sensibility,  are  accompanied  with  all  the 
feelings  which  make  up  the  sense  of  control,  and  get  remem- 
bered, thenceforth,  accordingly.  The  first  set  of  contents 
form  the  psychological  non-Ego  of  this  particular  phase  of 
consciousness.  The  second  set  of  contents  form  the  psycho- 
logical Ego  corresponding  thereto.  One  sees  why  the  Ego- 
part  of  this  sort  of  consciousness  includes  the  common 
sensibility,  and  the  sense  of  voluntary  control,  and  why  the 
non-Ego  here  involves  contents  that  are  set  off  by  the  con- 
trast as  uncontrollable,  and  as  not  closely  linked  to  the  com- 
mon sensibility.  And  it  is  in  this  contrast  that  the  source 


ANOMALIES  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.          185 

of  true  self-consciousness  lies.  We  do  not  observe  a  given 
group  of  mental  contents  as  such,  unless  they  are  marked 
off  by  contrast  from  other  contents.  One  could  have  all  the 
common  sensibility  you  please,  and  all  the  feelings  of  volun- 
tary control,  without  ever  coming  to  take  note  of  this  totality 
of  united  or  centralized  mental  contents  as  such,  and  as 
clearly  different  from  the  rest  of  one's  field  of  consciousness. 
Even  now  we  all  of  us  tend  to  lose  clear  self-consciousness 
so  soon  as  we  get  absorbed  in  any  activity,  such  as  rowing, 
hill-climbing,  singing,  whistling,  looking  about  us  at  natural 
scenery — any  activity  I  say,  whose  object  does  not,  by  the 
sharp  contrast  between  its  own  external  meaning  and  our 
efforts,  call  our  attention  to  our  specific  relation  to  some  non- 
Ego.  Yet  in  lonely  rowing  and  hill-climbing  the  common 
sensibility  is  as  richly  present  as  it  is  in  many  of  our  most 
watchfully  self-conscious  states.  On  the  other  hand,  when 
I  work  hard  to  make  my  meaning  clear  to  another  man,  or 
to  make  out  what  he  means,  I  am  self-conscious,  just  in  so  far 
as  I  contrast  my  idea  of  his  ways  and  thoughts,  with  my  own 
effort  to  conform  to  his  ways  and  thoughts.  And  just  such 
an  effort,  just  such  a  contrast,  seems  to  mediate  the  earliest 
self-consciousness  of  the  imitative  child,  and  to  secure  the 
tendency  of  the  self  to  be  built  up  about  the  common  sen- 
sibility, while  the  not  self  gets  sundered  therefrom.  So  then 
one  sees  the  rule :  If  one  is  keenly  self-conscious,  the  com- 
mon sensibility  must  be  central.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
one  may  have  a  rich  common  sensibility  without  any  keen 
self-consciousness.  It  is  the  contrast  of  Ego  and  non-Ego 
that  is  essential  to  self -consciousness. 

But  of  course  the  child's  relations  to  the  varying  non-Ego 
of  consciousness  do  not  remain  merely  imitative.  When 
once  he  has  other  minds  in  his  world,  the  function  whose 
essence  is  the  contrast  between  his  conceptions  of  these 
minds  and  his  view  of  his  own  response  to  them,  can  take 
as  many  forms  as  his  natural  instincts  determine.  His 


186  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

naive  life  of  appetites  gets  gradually  infected  by  his  con- 
scious relations  to  other  people.  He  wants  good  things, 
and  perhaps  must  feign  affection  or  show  politeness,  or 
invent  some  other  social  device,  to  get  what  he  wants. 
Here  again  is  an  activity  depending  upon  and  bringing  to 
light,  the  contrast  between  his  own  intention,  and  the  con- 
ceived or  perceived  personal  traits  and  whims  to  which  he 
conforms  his  little  skill.  He  learns  to  converse,  and  gets 
a  new  form  of  the  contrast  between  the  sayings  of  others 
(which  he  interprets  by  listening),  and  his  own  ideas  and 
meanings.  He  reaches  the  questioning  age,  and  now  he 
systematically  peers  into  the  minds  of  others  as  into  an 
endlessly  wealthy  non  Ego,  in  whose  presence  he  is  by 
contrast  self-conscious  as  an  inquirer.  Here,  every  time 
one  has  the  essential  element  of  contrast  upon  which  all 
self-consciousness  depends.  Argument  and  quarreling  later 
involve  similar  contrasts.  As  to  the  external  physical 
world — what  the  child  shall  most  care  for  in  that,  is  largely 
determined  for  him  by  his  social  relations.  Whatever  habit 
he  has  acquired  by  social  imitation,  he  can,  therefore,  in  the 
end,  apply  to  things  as  well  as  to  persons.  As  a  fact  he  is 
notoriously  often  animistic,  directly  transferring  social  hab- 
its to  physical  relations,  and  regarding  things  as  alive.  And 
here  again  he  becomes  self-conscious,  by  contrasting  his  own 
activities  with  the  conceived  natures  and  meanings  of  exter- 
nal things.  I  do  not  at  all  suppose  that  the  child  regards 
all  natural  things  in  an  animistic  way ;  but  I  am  of  opinion, 
for  reasons  which  I  have  set  forth  elsewhere,  that  our  whole 
tendency  to  distinguish  as  sharply,  as  we  all  now  do,  be- 
tween the  self  and  the  external  physical  world,  is  a  second- 
ary tendency,  due  in  the  child's  case,  to  social  influences. 
It  is  language,  it  is  the  accounts  that  people  give  to  us  of 
things,  it  is  the  socially  acquired  questioning  habit — it  is  such 
things  that  extend  the  contrast  between  Ego  and  non-Ego, 
at  first  mainly  a  social  contrast,  to  the  relations  between 


ANOMALIES  OP  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.          187 

one's  own  mind  and  one's  physical  environment.  Even 
now,  as  I  just  pointed  out,  if  we  forget  that  nature  is  full 
of  thinkable  mysteries,  of  meanings,  of  laws,  of  other  ideal 
contents  whose  significance  we  do  not  comprehend — if  we 
forget  this,  and  lapse  into  mere  busy  and  absorbing  physi- 
cal experience,  as  when  climbing  hills  alone,  or  rowing,  or 
cheerily  whistling  as  we  walk,  we  forget  to  be  self-con- 
scious, just  because  we  lose  sight  of  the  sharper  contrasts 

of  Ego  and  non-Ego. 

ill. 

But,  to  return  to  the  explicitly  social  relations,  there  is 
still  another  factor  to  note  in  our  early  relations  to  our  con- 
ceived social  non-Ego.  And  this  is  the  fact  that,  by  our 
instinctive  mental  constitution  as  moulded  by  our  social 
habits,  we  are  early  subject  to  a  vast  number  of  more  or  less 
secondary  emotions,  each  one  of  which  involves  large  alter- 
ations of  the  common  sensibility,  while  all  of  these  partic- 
ular emotions  arise  under  circumstances  which  make  ex- 
plicit the  contrast  between  one's  self,  and  one's  idea  of  one's 
fellow's  mind.  Such  emotions  we  get  as  children  when 
people  praise  us,  blame  us,  caress  us,  call  us  pet  names,  stare 
at  us,  call  us  by  name,  ask  us  questions,  and  otherwise  ap- 
peal to  us  in  noteworthy  ways.  Such  emotions  too  we  get 
again,  in  novel  forms,  in  youth,  when  the  subtle  coloring  of 
the  emotions  of  sex  begins  to  pervade  our  whole  social  life. 
Such  emotions  are  shame,  love,  anger,  pride,  delight  in  our 
own  bodily  seeming  as  displayed  before  others,  thrills  of 
social  expectation,  fears  of  appearing  ill  in  the  eyes  of  others. 
Such  emotions  involve  blushing,  weeping,  laughter,  inner 
glow,  visceral  sensations  of  the  most  various  kinds,  and 
feelings  of  the  instinctive  muscular  tensions  related  to  our 
countless  expressive  social  deeds.  These  experiences  are, 
however,  aroused  by  situations  all  of  which  essentially  in- 
volve the  aforesaid  contrast  between  our  own  ideas,  wishes, 
or  meanings,  and  the  conceived  states  of  other  minds. 


188  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

Hence  these  emotional  states  associate  themselves,  as  varia- 
tions of  the  common  sensibility,  first,  with  social  situations, 
i.  e.,  with  cases  where  Ego  and  non-Ego  are  sharply  con- 
trasted ;  and  then  especially  with  the  Ego-member  of  the 
relation  of  contrast.  And  so,  altogether  by  the  force  of 
habit,  these  emotions,  which  if  primarily  aroused  would  be 
mere  content,  belonging  neither  to  Ego  nor  to  non-Ego, 
come  to  be  the  specific  emotions  of  self -consciousness,  so 
that  now  whenever  we  have  just  these  emotions,  from  any 
cause  whatever,  we  are  at  once  keenly  self-conscious — and 
that  merely  because  the  emotions  in  question  faintly  or 
keenly  suggest  particular  social  situations.  Emotions  that 
have  had  no  such  constant  relation  to  social  situations,  in- 
volve no  such  marked  states  of  self-consciousness.  Fear  of 
physical  dangers  tends  to  diminish  our  self-consciousness ; 
shame  intensifies  it.  Yet  keen  physical  fear,  as  the  more 
primitive  emotion,  involves  vaster  commotions  of  the  com- 
mon sensibility  than  does  shame.  Were  then  the  marked 
presence  or  variation  of  the  common  sensibility  in  conscious- 
ness the  sole  and  sufficient  cause  of  the  presence  or  of  the 
variation  of  one's  immediate  or  sensory  Ego,  physical  terror 
would  make  one  more  self-conscious  than  does  shame.  But 
panic  fear,  in  its  intensest  conscious  forms,  involves  rather 
a  destruction  than  a  positive  alteration  of  self -consciousness ; 
while  the  most  abject  shame  grows  the  more  intensely  self- 
conscious  as  it  gets  the  more  marked.  Why  ?  Because 
shame,  habitually  associated  only  with  social  situations, 
suggests  them  even  where  it  is  pathological  and  is  not  due 
to  them ;  and  so  it  brings  to  consciousness  the  contrast  of 
Ego  and  non-Ego. 

Thus,  then,  it  is  that  I  propose  to  explain  what  the  cur- 
rent theories  of  self-consciousness  usually  seem  unable  to 
deal  with,  viz.,  the  before-mentioned  fact  that  certain  path- 
ological variations  of  the  common  sensibility  profoundly 
alter  the  tone  or  constitution  of  a  patient's  self-conscious- 


ANOMALIES  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.          ISO 

ness,  while  others,  equally  intimate  and  vast,  either  leave 
self -consciousness  relatively  intact,  or  simply  put  it  wholly 
out  of  sight  without  first  tampering  with  its  integrity. 
When  a  man  has  the  colic  he  does  not  say,  "  My  Ego  is  de- 
ranged." His  account  of  the  case  is  far  less  metaphysical. 
But  when,  as  in  the  depression  after  the  grippe,  he  has  cer- 
tain very  much  dimmer  and  more  subtle  alterations  of  the 
common  sensibility,  he  may  complain  of  precisely  such  a 
sense  of  alienation  from  himself.  Why  ?  Well,  as  I  should 
say,  the  colic  suggests  no  social  situation ;  the  vague  depres- 
sion after  the  grippe  may  dimly  suggest,  by  habit,  situations 
of  social  failure,  or  confusion,  or  powerlessness,  such  as, 
from  sensitive  childhood  until  now,  have  played  their  part 
in  one's  life.  The  suggestion  may  be  very  faint,  and  utterly 
abstract.  No  particular  failure,  no  special  case  of  social 
helplessness,  comes  to  mind.  But  our  nascent  associations 
can  be  present  in  all  degrees  of  faintness ;  and  here  I  main- 
tain are  associations  dimly  involving  social  contrasts  be- 
tween Ego  and  non-Ego.  Here,  then,  are  conditions  for  the 
function  of  self-consciousness. 

Since  the  emotional  alteration  of  the  common  sensibility 
has  thus  the  most  various  habitual  relations,  now  with  our 
unsocial  physical  states  as  such,  now  with  social  activities, 
one  sees  how  it  is  possible  for  a  nervous  sufferer  to  say,  on 
one  day,  that  he  personally  feels  his  very  being  wrecked, 
and  his  self-hood  lost  or  degraded,  while  on  another  day  he 
may  simply  declare  that  he  suffers  keenly,  but  regards  the 
affair  as  a  mere  physical  infliction,  external  to  his  central 
st'lf-hood.  In  the  physical  sufferings  of  sensitive  women 
this  shifting  of  the  enemy's  ground  from  the  region  of  the 
physical  or  psychical  pain  felt  as  a  mere  brute  fact,  hateful 
but  still  bearable,  to  the  region  where  the  sufferer  complains 
of  an  intolerable  loss  of  self-possession,  is  notoriously  a  com- 
mon and,  to  the  sufferer  herself,  a  puzzling  incident.  Both 
times  the  common  sensibility  is  deeply  affected,  often  in 


190  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

ways  not  subjectively  localizable ;  the  difference,  I  think, 
must  be  due  to  the  nascent  associations  of  the  common  sen- 
sibility now  with  ideas  of  social  situations,  now  with  ideas  of 
unsocial  bodily  events.  There  are  some  chronic  neurasthe- 
nic sufferers  who,  despite  headaches,  spinal  pains,  and  other 
distorted  sensations  innumerable,  preserve  for  years  a  mar- 
vellous self-possession  in  face  of  their  disorder  ;  very  many 
other  such  nervous  sufferers,  of  the  same  general  type,  are 
throughout  self-consciously  cowardly  and  abject.  One  can- 
not assert  that  the  latter  class  are  more  deranged  in  common 
sensibility  than  are  the  former.  But  many  a  neurasthenic 
man  has  really  little  to  complain  of,  except  the  unspeakable 
wretchedness  of  his  deranged  self-consciousness.  How  can 
one  explain  such  phenomena  without  resorting  to  the  princi- 
ples of  habit  and  association  ?  The  social  habits,  however, 
of  the  type  now  defined,  at  once  furnish  a  vera  causa  for  the 
interpretation  of  some  sensory  disturbances  as  alterations  of 
self-consciousness,  while  other  disturbances,  equally  great 
and  vague,  get  interpreted  by  the  sufferer  as  merely  external 
events.  To  be  sure  we  cannot  yet  give  an  exhaustive  classi- 
fication of  the  variations  of  the  common  sensibility  into 
those  closely  associated  with  social  situations,  and  those  not 
associated,  or  but  slightly  associated,  yet  the  contrast  of 
physical  fear  and  of  shame  has  already  shown  us  that  such 
a  classification  might,  with  care,  be  more  or  less  worked  out. 
We  know,  for  instance,  that  the  sexually  tinged  emotions 
normally  have  very  complex  social  associations.  Conse- 
quently, we  may  expect  to  find  self -consciousness  especially 
deranged  in  disorders  involving  the  sexual  functions.  This 
expectation  seems  to  be  abundantly  verified,  even  in  ordinary 
cases  of  disorder,  such  as  the  teacher  of  youth  may  some- 
times see  as  well  as  the  doctor ;  and  if  one  wants  more  veri- 
fication, one  may  get  it  at  will  from  the  monumental  records 
that  fill  Krafft-Ebing's  too  well-known  and  ghastly  book. 
On  the  other  hand,  a  sufferer  from  the  emotional  states 


ANOMALIES  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.          191 

accompanying  ordinary  physical  exhaustion,  or  from  some 
forms  even  of  grief,  or  from  a  severe  cold  that  does  not  give 
the  form  of  depression  now  associated  with  the  grip,  or  from 
some  forms  of  even  violent  headache,  often  wonders  how 
much  pain  and  emotional  alteration  he  can  endure  without 
any  proportionate  alteration  of  self-consciousness.  And 
these  states  are  precisely  such  forms  of  consciousness  as 
are  not  so  closely  associated  with  social  situations.  Finally, 
the  emotions  connected  with  laughter  furnish  an  almost  per- 
fect natural  experiment  for  our  purpose.  There  are  three 
principal  sorts  of  laughter :  the  laughter  of  mere  physical 
gleefulness,  such  as  appears  much  in  children,  less  in  adults ; 
the  laughter  of  scorn,  and  the  laughter  of  the  sense  of  hu- 
mor. The  first  is  not  an  especially  self-conscious  affair  ;  but 
the  laughter  of  scorn  and  of  a  sense  of  humor  are  both  of 
them  always  keenly  self-conscious,  involving  what  Hobbes 
called  "sudden  glory  in  him  that  laugheth."  The  emo- 
tions of  the  two  latter  types  involve  social  situations,  pres- 
ent or  suggested.  I  shall  find  no  time  to  point  out  at  any 
length  the  application  of  the  foregoing  analysis  to  the  study 
of  the  associative  alterations  of  the  socially  tinged  self-con- 
sciousness in  true  melancholia,  in  mania,  or  in  the  exalta- 
tion of  general  paralysis.  But  the  mention  of  such  altera- 
tion of  the  self  brings  us  at  once  to  the  next  and  final  stage 
of  our  inquiry. 

IV. 

I  have  so  far  spoken  of  self-consciousness  as  it  appears 
in  more  or  less  explicitly  social  relations.  But,  one  may 
reply,  "  Are  we  not,  at  pleasure,  self-conscious  when  we  are 
quite  alone  ?  Does  not  one  reflect,  does  not  one  judge  one's 
self  ?  Is  lonely  meditation  free  from  self-consciousness  ? 
Is  not  conscience  a  self-conscious  affair  ?  And  yet  in  such 
cases  does  one  contrast  an  Ego  with  any  literal  non-Ego  ? 
In  such  processes  is  not  the  Ego  explicitly  related  to  just 
the  Ego,  alone  by  itself  ?  And  are  there  not,  in  the  phe- 
14 


192  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

nomena  of  insanity,  many  alterations  of  this  sort  of  purely 
internal  self -consciousness  ? "  I  reply  at  once  that  my  the- 
ory is  precisely  that  habits  once  acquired  in  social  inter- 
course can  and  do  hold  over  when  we  are  alone,  and  can 
then  apply  within  the  content  of  one's  own  mind.  The 
transition  is  simple.  First,  I  can  dramatically  remember 
my  actually  past  imitative  deeds,  my  quarrels,  my  success- 
ful social  feats,  my  chagrins,  my  questionings,  my  criti- 
cisms of  others,  and  the  bearings  of  others  towards  me.  In 
all  such  cases  I  am  self-conscious  over  again  in  memory,  by 
virtue  of  our  now  familiar  contrast-effect.  Further,  as  just 
seen,  my  emotions  can  vaguely  suggest  social  situations 
indefinite  in  character  to  any  degree.  By  coalescence,  a 
vast  group  of  social  habits  of  judging  others,  and  of  feeling 
myself  judged  by  them,  can  get  woven  into  a  complex  prod- 
uct such  as  is  now  my  conscience.  Conscience  is  a  well- 
knit  system  of  socially  acquired  habits  of  estimating  acts — a 
system  so  constituted  as  to  be  easily  aroused  into  conscious 
presence  by  the  coming  of  the  idea  of  any  hesitantly  con- 
ceived act.  If  conscience  is  aroused  in  the  presence  of  such 
a  hesitant  desire  to  act,  one  has,  purely  as  a  matter  of  social 
habit,  a  disposition  to  have  present  both  the  tendency  to  the 
action,  and  the  disposition  to  judge  it,  standing  to  one  an- 
other in  the  now  familiar  relation  of  Ego  and  non-Ego. 
"Which  one  of  them  appears  as  the  Ego,  which  the  non-Ego, 
depends  upon  which  most  gets  possession,  in  the  field  of 
consciousness,  of  the  common  sensibility.  If  the  tendency 
to  the  estimated  act  is  a  passionate  tendency,  a  vigorous 
temptation,  and  if  the  conscientious  judgment  is  a  coldly 
intellectual  affair,  then  the  situation  dimly  reminds  me  of 
cases  where  other  people,  authoritative  and  dignified  rather 
than  pleasing,  have  reproved  my  wishes.  Conscience  is  then 
the  colder  non-Ego,  the  voice  of  humanity,  or  of  God.  My 
common  sensibility  merges  with  my  passion.  The  reproof 
perhaps  shames  me ;  yet  I  want  to  have  my  way ;  only  that 


ANOMALIES  OF  SELF-COXSCIOUSNESS.          193 

other,  that  authoritative  inner  non-Ego,  my  conscience,  will 
not  let  me  go  free.  But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  the  conceived 
act  is  less  keenly  desired,  and  if  my  conscientious  plans  are 
just  now  either  fervently  enthusiastic  or  sternly  resolute  in 
my  mind,  then  it  is  my  conscience  which  merges  with  my 
common  sensibility,  and  I  myself  am  now,  in  presence  of 
the  conceived  act,  as  if  judging  another.  I  feel  then  secure 
in  my  righteousness,  and  I  look  with  disdain  upon  that 
which  would  tempt  me  if  I  were  weaker,  but  which  now  is 
a  mere  non-Ego.  It  is  in  a  similar  fashion,  by  a  dramatic 
imitation  not  of  actual,  but  of  abstractly  possible  social  rela- 
tions, that  I  can  question  myself,  and  wait  for  an  answer, 
can  reflect  upon  my  own  meaning,  can  admire  myself,  love 
myself,  hate  myself,  laugh  at  myself,  in  short  do  or  suffer  in 
presence  of  my  own  states  and  processes  whatever  social  life 
has  taught  me  to  do  or  to  suffer  in  presence  of  the  states  and 
processes  of  others.  In  every  such  case  the  central  Ego  is  so 
much  of  my  conscious  process  as  tends  more  to  merge  with 
the  common  sensibility.  My  inner,  but  more  peripheral, 
relative  non-Ego  is  so  much  of  my  conscious  process  as 
tends  more  to  resemble,  in  interest,  in  general  tone,  or  in 
uncontrollable  unexpectedness,  the  experiences  which,  in 
ordinary  social  life,  are  due  to  other  people.  Yet  since  all 
these  inner  contrasts  are  constantly  corrected  by  my  habits 
of  external  perception  and  of  memory,  which  remind  me  all 
the  while  of  a  literal  non-Ego  outside  of  all  these  processes, 
this  inner  sundering  normally  remains  only,  as  Professor 
L: idd  has  called  it,  dramatic — a  sort  of  metaphor,  which  I 
can  correct  at  pleasure,  saying  at  any  moment,  "but  all  this 
is  merely  Ego,  after  all.  The  real  non-Ego  is  the  world  of 
live  other  people  yonder." 

Thus  the  normal  inner  life  of  reflection,  of  conscience,  of 
meditation,  and  of  the  so-called  "spiritual  Ego"  in  general, 
is  simply,  in  us  human  beings,  an  imitation,  a  brief  abstract 
and  epitome,  of  our  literal  social  life.  We  have  no  habits  of 


STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

self -consciousness  which  are  not  derived  from  social  habits, 
counterparts  thereof.  Where  the  analogy  of  our  relations 
to  our  fellows  ceases,  reflection  ceases  also.  And  this  is 
precisely  what  constitutes  the  limitation  of  our  reflective 
processes  in  philosophy  and  in  psychology. 

But  surely,  if  this  summarizes  the  conditions  of  our  nor- 
mal self-consciousness,  when  we  are  thinking  alone,  it  also 
gives  room  for  indefinitely  numerous  abnormal  variations. 
Suppose  that  there  appear  in  the  conscious  field  hallucina- 
tions of  the  muscular  sense,  of  the  sort  so  well  described 
in  Cramer's  noted  monograph.  Let  these  be  motor  speech 
hallucinations.  Then  the  patient  may  observe  the  puzzling 
phenomenon  that,  whenever  he  thinks,  there  is  some  myste- 
rious tendency  present  that  aims  to  objectify  his  thoughts, 
in  spoken  words.  Somebody  or  something  either  takes  his 
own  thoughts  away  from  him  and  speaks  them,  or  forces 
him,  willy-nilly,  to  speak  them  himself.  The  thoughts  are 
his  own.  The  sounding  of  them  forth,  in  this  way,  is  not 
his.  His  thoughts  run  off  his  tongue,  get  spoken  in  his 
stomach,  creak  out  in  his  shoes  as  he  walks,  are  mockingly 
echoed  or  in  the  end  commented  upon  by  another  power. 
This  other  power,  this  stealing  of  his  thoughts,  involves  of 
course  a  deep  disturbance  of  his  self-consciousness,  which 
tends  gradually  to  pass  over  into  a  regular  system  of  delu- 
sions. Yet  what  does  the  process  mean  ?  It  means,  at  first, 
merely  the  appearance  of  uncontrollable  elements  of  con- 
sciousness, which  by  virtue  of  the  habits  connected  with  the 
uncontrollable  in  general  cannot  get  merged  in  the  common 
sensibility,  and  which  are  yet  in  a  problematic  and  painfully 
intimate  relation  to  what  he  does  recognize  as  his  own.  This 
foreign  power  need  not  for  a  good  while  behave  enough  like 
the  true  voice  of  another  to  become  a  genuine  hallucinatory 
comrade  or  enemy,  as  it  would  do  and  does  if  the  patient 
hears  his  voices  without  of  himself  recognizing  their  close 
relation  to  his  stream  of  thought.  But  in  this  uncontrolla- 


ANOMALIES  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.          195 

ble  hallucinatory  thinking  aloud  there  is  enough  suggestion 
of  the  foreign  to  make  the  patient  feel  that  his  own  thoughts 
are  getting  somehow  estranged  from  him.  That  these  are 
his  own  thoughts  he  at  first  knows,  by  virtue  of  the  general 
contrasts  between  real  Ego  and  real  non-Ego  still  present  to 
him.  That  they  are  getting  estranged  he  knows,  for  that  is 
to  any  one  a  relative  non-Ego  which  behaves  more  or  less 
as  one's  original  social  non-Ego,  one's  fellow  in  society, 
behaves.  His  behaviour  is  relatively  uncontrollable;  and 
so  is  here  that  of  the  patient's  thoughts. 

Or  again,  suppose  that  one's  depressed  emotional  condi- 
tion, as  in  melancholia,  or  at  the  outset  of  a  delirium  of  sus- 
picion or  of  persecution,  contains  emotions  resembling  the 
normal  emotions  of  conscientious  guilt,  or  the  feeling  of 
social  dread.  Then  these  feelings  tend  to  assimilate  in  one's 
actual  surroundings,  or  in  one's  memories,  data  which  sug- 
gest, to  one  patient  an  actually  believed  social  condemna- 
tion of  his  deeds,  or  an  actual  judgment  of  his  inner  con- 
science passed  upon  his  sin  fulness,  while  to  another  patient 
his  own  sorts  of  emotion  suggest  an  especially  hostile  scru- 
tiny of  his  appearance  by  the  passers-by,  or  an  inner  sense 
that  he  must  hide  from  possible  scrutiny.  On  the  other 
hand,  feelings  quite  the  reverse  of  these  suggest  to  the  ex- 
alted general  paralytic  whatever  remembered  or  fancied 
social  relations,  expressing  his  vast  powers,  the  fragments 
of  left-over  social  habits  which  still  survive  in  his  chaos 
permit  him,  in  passing,  to  express. 

Or,  once  more,  another  patient  has  present  to  con- 
sciousness two  or  more  streams  of  feelings,  impulses, 
thoughts,  which  are  sharply  contrasted  with  one  another, 
while  the  portions  of  each  stream  more  or  less  hang  to- 
gether,  by  virtue  of  common  contents  or  tone.  All  of  these 
streams  belong  to  his  general  Ego — this  he  recognizes  by 
the  normal  contrast  witli  the  actual  rxti-nial  world.  But 
meanwhile  they  have  their  inner  contrast,  which  is  no 


196  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

longer,  like  the  just  mentioned  contrasts  in  normal  con- 
sciousness, a  source  of  merely  dramatic  metaphor.  This 
abnormal  contrast  is  intense,  uncontrollable,  continuous. 
Now  let  the  reflections,  or  the  context  of  these  streams  be 
such  as  in  any  fashion  to  remind  the  patient  of  any  social 
relation,  contest,  rivalry,  quarrel,  criticism,  pity,  question- 
ing, discussion  ;  and  then  the  patient  can  only  say :  "  There 
are  in  me  two  or  more  selves,  I  am  divided."  If  one  of 
the  streams  involves  more  of  the  common  sensibility  than 
does  the  others,  or  more  of  the  sense  of  control,  the  patient 
may  speak  of  the  less  favored  streams  as  other  selves,  or 
as  the  "Other  Fellow"  without  having  any  full-fledged 
delusion  of  a  real  outside  oppressor.  And  in  all  this 
there  will  be  mere  associations  of  ideas,  mere  socially 
acquired  habits — no  new  mysteries  of  self-hood  what- 
ever. 

I  conclude  with  a  summary  of  the  main  theses  of  the 
foregoing  paper. 

1.  Self-conscious  functions  are  all  of  them,  in  their  finite, 
human,  and  primary  aspect,  social  functions,  due  to  the 
habits  of  human  intercourse.    They  involve  the  presenta- 
tion of  some  contrast  between  Ego  and   non-Ego.     This 
psychological  contrast  is  primarily  that  between  the  sub- 
ject's own  conscious  act,  idea,  intent,  or  other  experience, 
and  an  expereince  which  is  regarded  by  him  as  represent- 
ing the  state  of  another's  mind.    By  means  of  habits  gradu- 
ally acquired,  this  contrast  early  comes  to  be  extended  to 
include  that  between  one's  inner  states  and  the  represented 
realities  which  make  up  the  physical  world. 

2.  In  the  primary  cases  of   contrast  between  Ego  and 
non-Ego,  the  former — the  Ego — always   includes  (for  rea- 
sons which  have  been   explained   in   the  foregoing)   the 
present  modifications  of  the  common  sensibility,  and  the 
feelings  of  the  sense  of  control,  where  these  are  present 
tit  all.    The  latter,  the  psychological  non-Ego,  is  a  colder, 


ANOMALIES  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.         197 

a  more  localized,  and    less  controllable  mass  of  mental 
contents. 

3.  Emotional  states,  and  in  general  all  those  modifica- 
tions of  the  common  sensibility  which  uniformly  accompa- 
ny any  of  our  social  reflexes,  become,  by  association,  linked 
with  our  memories  and  ideas  of  social  situations,  and  can- 
not be  repeated  without  more  or  less  clearly  or  vaguely  re- 
minding us  of  our  social  situations  in  an  individual  or  in  a 
summary  form. 

4.  When  social  situations  involving  particular  contrasts 
of  Ego  and  non-Ego  are  remembered  or  imagined,  we  be- 
come self-conscious  in  memory,  or  in  idea.    When  emotions, 
associated  by  old  habit  with  social  situations,  dimly  or  sum- 
marily suggest  such  situations,   with  their  accompanying 
contrast  of  Ego  and   non-Ego,  our  self-consciousness  gets 
colored  accordingly.    Finally,  when  the  varied  contents  of 
our  isolated  consciousness  involve  in  any  way,  as  they  pass, 
contrasts  which  either  remind  us  of  the  social  contrast  be- 
tween Ego  and  non-Ego,  or  excite  us  to  acts  involving  social 
habit,  such  as  questioning,  or  internal  speech,  we  become 
reflectively  self-conscious,  even  when  quite  alone  with  our 
own  states. 

5.  The  anomalies  of  self-consciouness  are  (1)  primary 
alterations  of  the  common  sensibility,  or  of  the  other  con- 
tents of  passing  consciousness,  such  as  dimly  or  clearly 
suggest  anomalous  social  situations,  contrasts  and  func- 
tions ;  or  else  they  are  (2)  primary  anomalies  in  one's  social 
habits  themselves.    The  two  forms  can  be  of  course  to  any 
degree  combined. 


VIII. 

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS,   SOCIAL  CONSCIOUS- 
NESS AND  NATURE* 

THE  ultimate  purpose  of  the  present  paper  is  to  reach, 
and,  in  closing,  to  sketch  some  views  as  to  the  relation  of 
Man  to  Nature.  By  way  of  introduction,  I  must  first  define 
the  place  of  my  inquiry  in  the  general  catalogue  of  philo- 
sophical questions,  and  must  then  state  the  theses  that  I 
mean  to  defend. 

There  are  two  great  divisions  of  philosophy — theoretical 
and  practical.  The  present  paper  concerns  itself  with  a 
matter  belonging  to  theoretical  philosophy.  Within  the 
range  of  theoretical  philosophy,  however,  one  may  distin- 
guish between  the  discussion  of  the  ultimate  problems  of 
knowledge  and  of  truth,  and  the  treatment  of  the  more 
special  theoretical  problems  suggested  by  our  human  expe- 
rience. General  Epistemology  and  general  Metaphysics 
have  to  do  with  what  can  be  made  out  about  the  deepest 
nature  of  our  knowledge  and  the  final  constitution  of  the 
universe.  But  there  are,  within  the  scope  of  theoretical 
philosophy,  other  problems  relating  to  the  constitution  of 
our  finite  world — problems  which  are  often  grouped  together 
as  the  questions  of  special  metaphysics,  or  of  the  Philosophy 
of  Nature — a  doctrine  to  which  has  also  sometimes  been 
given  the  name  Cosmology.  The  problems  of  Cosmology 

*A  paper  read  before  the  Philosophical  Club  of  Brown  University, 
May  23, 1895,  and  later  considerably  enlarged  and  supplemented. 

198 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  199 

are  such  as  the  questions :  What  is  the  truth  behind  what 
we  mortals  call  Nature,  or  the  physical  world  ?  What  are 
finite  minds,  and  how  are  they  related  to  physical  reality  ? 
What,  if  any,  is  the  philosophical  interpretation  to  be  given 
to  the  doctrine  of  Evolution  ? 

Now  the  present  paper,  as  I  just  said,  is  an  inquiry  within 
the  region  of  theoretical  philosophy.  Within  that  region 
my  investigation,  however,  here  concerns  itself  only  second- 
arily with  the  ultimate  problems  of  general  metaphysics. 
I  shall  chiefly  aim  to  reach,  before  I  close,  light  as  to  a  cer- 
tain problem  of  philosophical  cosmology.  Here  about  us,  as 
we  all  admit,  whatever  our  ultimate  metaphysical  views,  is 
the  natural  world,  the  world  that  appears  to  our  senses — a 
world  manifesting  some  sort  of  finite,  and  obviously,  as  we 
mortals  see  it,  some  sort  of  highly  fragmentary  truth.  Now 
man,  as  we  phenomenally  know  him,  appears  as  a  part  of 
nature,  a  product  of  nature,  a  being  whose  destinies  seem  to 
be  the  sport  of  purely  physical  laws.  The  problem  that  this 
paper  aims  in  the  end  to  approach  is :  What  is  the  meaning 
of  this  phenomenal  relation  of  man  to  nature  ? 

Now,  as  I  need  not  say,  a  real  answer  to  this  question 
must  lead  us  past,  if  not  through,  the  realms  of  the  most 
ultimate  and  general  sort  of  metaphysical  inquiry.  Nor 
will  this  paper  wholly  escape  the  responsibility  of  consider- 
ing to  some  extent,  as  we  proceed,  such  ultimate  matters. 
But  on  the  other  hand,  all  philosophical  students  are  used 
to  the  fragmentary,  and  I  shall  not  here  attempt  complete- 
ness. Such  general  metaphysical  views  as  come  in  sight  in 
this  paper  will  remain,  after  all,  of  rather  secondary  impor- 
tance. I  shall  attempt  only  to  clear  some  of  the  way  that 
leads  from  the  study  of  man  as  we  ordinarily  know  him 
towards  the  regions  where  general  philosophy  attempts  to 
grapple  with  the  ultimate  issues  of  life,  and  with  the  rational 
constitution  of  the  universe. 

The  relation  of  man  to  nature — this,  then,  is  our  immo- 


200  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

diate  topic.  But  why,  you  may  ask,  if  such  is  the  purpose 
of  this  paper,  have  I  chosen  my  actual  title  ?  Why  does  a 
study  of  the  relations  of  Self -consciousness  and  Social  Con- 
sciousness seem  adapted  to  throw  light  on  the  cosmological 
problem  of  the  relation  of  human  beings  to  natural  pro- 
cesses ?  To  this  preliminary  question  let  us  at  once  address 

ourselves. 

I. 

The  philosophical  examination  of  man's  social  conscious- 
ness has  been  left,  rather  too  exclusively,  in  the  hands  of 
the  students  of  ethics.  Even  the  psychologists,  until  very 
recently,  have  paid  a  very  inadequate  attention  to  the  dis- 
tinctively social  aspects  of  their  science.  It  is  far  too  cus- 
tomary, in  consequence,  for  the  ethical  philosophers  them- 
selves to  begin  their  study  of  the  duties  of  man  with  a  very 
abstract  view  of  the  nature  of  the  social  consciousness,  and 
of  its  original  relations  to  our  self-consciousness.  We  hear 
nowadays,  for  instance,  in  popular  philosophy,  a  greal  deal 
about  the  supposed  primal  and  natural  conflict  between 
Egoism  and  Altruism.  Egoism,  so  we  are  told,  is  the 
original  human  tendency — the  natural  and  innate  bias  of 
any  one  of  us  mortals.  And  it  is  so  because,  as  soon  as 
one  becomes  self-conscious,  i.  e.,  aware  of  one's  Ego,  one 
finds  one's  self,  as  an  animal,  instinctively  selfish.  The 
practical  tendency  of  the  self -preserving  animal  organism, 
translated  into  the  terms  of  self-consciousness,  becomes 
deliberate  Egoism.  Hence  the  moral  problem  is  to  make  a 
man  altruistic.  The  philosophical  problem  of  ethics,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  to  show  a  man  why  he  ought  to  be  altruis- 
tic, i.  e.,  why  Egoism,  which  is  naturally  prior  and  appar- 
ently self-evident,  ought  rationally  to  be  subordinated,  upon 
reflection,  to  its  derived  and  slowly  acquired  natural  oppo- 
nent, Altruism. 

But  now,  I  insist  that,  as  a  fact,  this  far  too  customary 
notion  of  a  natural  and  fatal  opposition  between  self-con- 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  201 

sciousness,  Egoism,  and  our  socially  determined  and  derived 
Altruism,  is  also  far  too  falsely  abstract  a  notion.  There  are 
evil  tendencies  in  plenty  in  human  nature,  and  common 
sense  has  a  very  wholesome  meaning  in  mind  when  it  con- 
demns our  natural  selfishness.  But  when  one  defines  in 
philosophical  terms  our  evil  tendencies,  or  undertakes  to 
analyse  in  an  ultimate  sense  what  common  sense  knows  as 
our  selfishness,  one  does  ill  if  one  merely  substitutes  ab- 
stract distinctions  for  our  concrete  and  passionate  life-con- 
flicts. As  a  fact,  the  abstract  opposition,  Ego  and  Alter,  or 
Egoism  and  Altruism,  ill  suggests  the  meaning  of  the  op- 
posed ethical  aims  that  struggle  in  us.  This  whole  cus- 
tomary popular  and  philosophical  opposition  between  a 
man's  self -consciousness,  as  if  it  were  something  primitive 
and  lonely,  and  his  social  consciousness,  as  if  that  were 
something  acquired,  apart  from  his  self -consciousness, 
through  intercourse  with  his  fellows,  is  false  to  human 
nature.  As  a  fact,  a  man  becomes  self-conscious  only  in 
the  most  intimate  connection  with  the  growth  of  his  social 
consciousness.  These  two  forms  of  consciousness  are  not 
separable  and  opposed  regions  of  a  man's  life ;  they  are  thor- 
oughly interdependent.  I  am  dependent  on  my  fellows, 
not  only  physically,  but  to  the  very  core  of  my  conscious 
self-hood,  not  only  for  what,  physically  speaking,  I  am,  but 
for  what  I  take  myself  to  be.  Take  away  the  Alter  from 
consciousness,  and  the  conscious  Ego,  so  far  as  in  this 
world  we  know  it,  languishes,  and  languishing  dies,  what- 
ever may  become  of  the  organism  in  whose  fortunes  this 
Ego,  while  it  is  known  to  persist,  seems  to  be  involved. 
Hence,  I  am  not  first  self-conscious,  and  then  secondarily 
conscious  of  my  fellow.  On  the  contrary,  I  am  conscious 
of  myself,  on  the  whole,  as  in  relation  to  some  real  or  ideal 
fellow,  and  apart  from  my  consciousness  of  my  fellows  I 
have  only  secondary  and  derived  states  and  habits  of  self- 
consciousness.  I  cannot  really  will  to  preserve  the  Ego, 


202  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

then — this  derived  conscious  creature  of  the  habits  of  my 
social  consciousness ;  I  cannot  really  will  to  preserve  the 
Ego,  without  also  willing  to  preserve  and  to  defend  some 
sort  of  Alter,  and  some  sort  of  relation  to  my  fellow  who  is 
this  Alter,  and  upon  whom  my  conscious  Ego  depends  for 
its  very  life.  It  is  only  in  abstraction  that  I  can  be  merely 
egoistic.  In  the  concrete  case  I  can  only  be  egoistic  by 
being  also  voluntarily  altruistic,  however  base  may  be  the 
sort  of  Altruism  that  I  chance  to  prefer.  I  can  aim,  for 
instance,  to  be  a  political  "  boss.''  That  appears  to  be  a  very 
egoistic  aim.  But  the  political  "  boss "  exists  by  the  suf- 
frages of  interested  people,  and  must  aim  at  their  conscious, 
even  if  illusory,  sense  of  advantage  in  so  far  as  he  wills  them 
to  be  sincerely  interested.  I  can  will  to  be  a  flattering  dema- 
gogue, admired  for  vain  show  by  a  crowd  of  fools.  The  end 
is  selfish ;  but  it  also  involves  wishing  to  be  agreeable  in  the 
eyes  of  many  people ;  and  even  a  saint  might  on  occasion 
wisely  include  so  much  of  the  demagogue's  aim  in  his  own 
vastly  different  context  of  voluntary  life.  The  tyrant  wills 
the  lives  and  even  the  limited  good  fortune  of  his  subjects, 
for  without  powerful  and  numerous  and  even  devoted  sub- 
jects he  would  be  no  tyrant.  The  master  wills  his  slave's 
preservation,  even  in  willing  to  preserve  his  own  mastery. 
Even  the  thief  or  the  defaulter  wills  that  the  hoarding  of 
valuable  property  should  be  on  the  average  sufficiently  ad- 
vantageous to  others  to  make  them  willing  and  careful  to 
provide  him  with  the  wherewithal  to  win  his  thief's  liveli- 
hood. Even  the  murderer,  although  he  directly  aims  to 
destroy  his  fellow,  does  so,  in  general,  and  whenever  the 
act  is  deliberate  and  intelligent,  for  a  social  end — honor, 
property,  power — all  of  them  ends  which  involve  willing 
the  preservation,  and  even  the  prosperity,  of  many  social 
relations  involving  others  than  the  murderer  himself. 
There  is,  then,  much  bad  Altruism  in  the  world,  much  base, 
wishing  of  social  relations  which  do  involve  the  preserva- 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  203 

tion,  and  even  the  relative  private  advantage  of  others 
besides  the  evil-doer.  But  bad  Altruism  is  not  mere  Ego- 
ism, nor  is  it  identical  with  a  lower  animal's  unconsciously 
naive  selfishness.  The  mere  instincts  of  the  self-preserva- 
tion of  this  organism  have  to  be  far  transcended  before  one 
can  become  consciously  egoistic.  Vanity,  pride,  love  of 
social  power,  the  greed  of  mastery,  covetousness,  oppression 
— all  these  are  tendencies  that,  just  in  so  far  as  they  are 
conscious  and  deliberate,  involve  not  only  Egoism,  i.  e.,  the 
love  of  the  advantage  of  this  individual,  but  also  some  more 
or  less  evil  form  of  Altruism — the  love  of  the  preservation, 
and  often  of  a  certain  limited  advantage,  of  those  of  one's 
fellows  who  form  the  necessary  other  term  of  the  social 
relation  which  satisfies  one's  vanity,  one's  greed,  or  one's 
love  of  power.  In  brief,  speaking  ethically,  you  cannot 
consciously  be  merely  egoistic.  For  you,  as  a  man,  exist 
only  in  human  relations.  Your  aims  have  to  be  more 
or  less  social,  just  so  far  as  you  clearly  define  them.  The 
ethical  problem  is  not:  Shall  I  aim  to  preserve  social 
relations  ?  but :  What  social  relations  shall  I  aim  to  pre- 
serve ? 

But  to  return  from  these  illustrations  to  the  general  topic  : 
my  first  point  on  this  occasion  is  that,  just  as  there  is  no  con- 
scious Egoism  without  some  distinctly  social  reference,  so 
there  is,  on  the  whole,  in  us  men,  no  self-consciousness  apart 
from  some  more  or  less  derived  form  of  the  social  conscious- 
ness. I  am  I  in  relation  to  some  sort  of  a  non-Ego.  And,  as 
a  fact,  the  non-Ego  that  I  am  accustomed  to  deal  with  when 
I  think  and  act, is  primarily  some  real  or  ideal  finite  fellow- 
being,  in  actual  or  possible  social  relations  with  me,  and  this 
social  non-Ego,  real  or  ideal,  is  only  secondarily  to  be  turned 
into  anything  else,  as,  for  example,  into  a  natural  object 
tli.it  I  regard  as  a  mere  dead  thing.  And  I  have  dwelt  upon 
these  facts  here  for  the  sake  of  first  introducing  a  matter  to- 
wards whose  final  definition  the  whole  of  the  following  argu- 


204:  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

raent  is  to  tend,  viz.,  the  assertion  that  what  you  and  I  mean 
by  Nature  is,  as  a  finite  reality,  something  whose  very  con- 
ception we  have  actually  derived  from  our  social  relations 
with  one  another ;  so  that,  as  we  shall  see,  to  believe  that 
there  really  exists  a  finite  reality  called  Nature,  is  of  neces- 
sity, when  you  rightly  analyze  the  facts,  to  believe  that 
there  is,  in  the  real  universe,  an  extra-human,  but  finite 
conscious  life,  manifesting  its  presence  to  us  by  means  sub- 
stantially similar  to  those  whereby  we  have  become  assured 
of  the  presence  of  the  inner  life  of  our  human  fellows.  As 
it  is  not  true  that  we  are  primarily  and  in  unsocial  abstrac- 
tion merely  egoistic,  just  so  it  is  not  true  that  we  primarily 
know  merely  our  own  inner  life  as  individuals,  apart  from 
an  essentially  social  contrast  with  other  minds.  While  it 
is  true,  as  all  idealistic  analysis  has  affirmed,  that  the  object 
of  knowledge  is  precisely  what  it  is  known  as  being,  it  is  not 
true  that  you  and  I  ever  know  our  own  individual  inner 
world  of  objects,  without  contrasting  these  objects  with 
others  that  we  regard  as  present  to  some  sort  of  conscious 
life  beyond  our  own.  But  primarily  we  learn  to  contrast 
our  own  inner  life  with  what  we  regard  as  the  inner  life 
of  our  fellows  in  human  society.  It  is  by  virtue  of  this 
very  contrast  of  our  own  inner  life  with  a  finite  conscious 
life  beyond  our  own,  viz.,  that  of  our  human  fellows,  that 
we  become  self-conscious.  When  later,  for  reasons  that  I 
shall  soon  define,  we  learn  to  oppose  to  ourselves  as  finite 
knowers,  a  world  of  relatively  independent  natural  objects, 
which  we  conceive  as  existent  apart  from  any  human  in- 
sight, all  the  categories  in  terms  of  which  we  can  learn  to 
think  of  these  nature-objects  are  categories  derived  from 
our  social  experience,  and  modified,  but  not  really  trans- 
formed, to  suit  the  peculiar  behavior  of  the  relatively  un- 
social beings  whose  existence  our  experience  seems  to  indi- 
cate to  us  in  nature.  Our  relations  with  nature  are  thus 
such  as  involve  a  more  or  less  social  contrast  between  our 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  205 

life  and  the  life  of  nature.    And  upon  this  principle  every 
philosophy  of  nature  must  rest 

ii. 

I  have  begun  our  research,  as  you  see,  by  some  decidedly 
ganeral  and  positive  assertions.  I  must  next  try  to  show 
you  more  precisely  and  more  in  detail  what  these  assertions 
mean,  and  why  I  find  myself  obliged  to  hold  them. 

The  theses  of  the  present  paper,  set  forth  in  particular, 
run  as  follows : 

1.  A  man  is  conscious  of  himself,  as  this  finite  being, 
only  in  so  far  as  he  contrasts  himself,  in  a  more  or  less  defi- 
nitely social  way,  with  what  he  takes  to  be  the  life,  and,  in 
fact,  the  conscious  life,  of  some  other  finite  being — unless, 
indeed,  he  modifies  his  natural  self-consciousness  by  con- 
trasting his  own  life  with  the  conceived  fullness  of  the  life 
of  God.    But  except  by  virtue  of  some  such  contrast  one 
cannot  become  self-conscious,  and  the  result  is  that,  as  a 
matter  of  simple  and  necessary  meaning,  if  any  metaphys- 
ical argument  is  to  prove  than  I  am  I,  viz.,  this  finite  being, 
then  at  the  same  time  this  argument  will  prove  that  there  is 
other  conscious  life  besides  mine.    For  otherwise  my  own 
finite  life  as  this  Ego  cannot  be  defined  or  conceived. 

2.  The  other  conscious  life  that  I  must  contrast  with 
mine,  in  order  to  become  self-conscious,  is  primarily,  in  our 
human  relations,  the  life  of  my  fellow  in  the  social  order. 
The  original,  as  Hume  would  say,  of  the  conception  of  a 
non-Ego  is  given  to  me  in  my  social  experiences.    The  real 
other  being  that  I,  as  this  finite  Ego,  can  know  is,  at  first, 
the  human  being.    A  man  who  had  no  social  relations 
could  form  no  clear  conception  of  the  reality  of  any  finite 
non-Ego,  and  so  could  get  no  clear  notion  of  the  reality  of 
the  non-Ego  now  called  Nature.     Our  conception  of  phys- 
ical reality  as  such  is  secondary  to  our  conception  of  our 
social  fellow-beings,  and  is  actually  derived  therefrom. 


206  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

3.  In  consequence,  any  metaphysical  proof  that  what  we 
human  beings  mean  by  physical  nature  exists  at  all,  must 
also  be  a  proof  that  behind  the  phenomena  of  nature,  just 
in  so  far  as  nature  has  finite  reality,  there  is  other  conscious 
life,  finite  like  our  own,  but  unlike  human  life  in  so  far  as 
it,  the  nature-life,  does  not  enter  into  closer  social  relations 
with  us  human  beings.    Yet  all  that  manifests  to  us  the  ex- 
ternal existence  of  nature,  does  so  by  virtue  of  a  more  or  less 
definite  appeal  to  the  categories  of  our  social  consciousness. 

4.  But,  as  a  fact,  a  probable  proof,  not  amounting  to 
philosophical  demonstration,  but  capable  of  an  indefinite 
degree  of  extension  and  illustration,  does  exist  for  the  ex- 
istence of  a  real  finite  world  called  the  Realm  of  Nature. 
Hence,  this  very  proof  indicates  that  there  is  behind  the 
phenomena  of  nature  a  world  of  finite  life  in  more  or  less 
remote,  but  socially  disposed  relations  to  us  human  beings. 

5.  This  proof  of  the  finite  reality  of  a  conscious  life  be- 
hind the  phenomena  of  nature  is  furnished  by  the  whole 
mass  of  facts  that  in  modern  times  have  come  to  be  con- 
ceived together  as  the  basis  of  the  doctrine  of  Evolution. 
And  the  doctrine  of  Evolution  must  in  the  end  be  inter- 
preted in  terms  of  this  notion.     In  other  words,  the  doc- 
trine of  Evolution  seems  to  me  the  beginning  of  what 
promises  to  become  a  sort  of  universal  Sociology,  tending 
towards  a  definition  of  the  social  relations  of  the  finite 
beings  that  together   must    make   up   the  whole   natural 
world,  both  human  and  extra-human. 

6.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  the  view  of  nature  thus  indi- 
cated ought  to  be  very  sharply  distinguished,  both  from 
most  traditional  forms  of  Animism  and  of  Hylozoism,  and 
from  the  modern  doctrine  of  Mind-Stuff.     The  view  that  I 
have  in  mind  is  not  Schopenhauer's  doctrine  of  the  Will  in 
Nature,  nor  Schell  ing's  Naturphilosophie,  nor  von  Hart- 
mann's  theory  of  the  Unconscious  as  manifested  in  physical 
phenomena.    From  such  theories  mine  is  to  be  distinguished 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  207 

by  its  genesis.  It  tries  to  avoid  all  premature  dogmatism  as 
to  the  inner  aspect  of  the  life  of  nature.  But  it  conceives 
the  possibility  of  a  gradual  and,  as  one  may  hope,  a  very 
significant  enlargement,  through  the  slow  growth  of  human 
experience,  of  our  insight  into  the  inner  meaning  of  na- 
ture's life,  and  into  the  essentially  social  constitution  of 
the  finite  world.  Meanwhile  this  conception  of  the  natural 
order  as  a  vast  social  organism,  of  which  human  society  is 
only  a  part,  is  founded  upon  no  merely  animistic  analogies 
between  the  physical  phenomena  and  the  phenomena  of  our 
organisms,  but  upon  a  decidedly  deeper  analysis  of  the  very 
nature  of  our  conception  of  other  finite  beings  besides  our- 
selves. And  further,  if  my  conception  is  true,  it  quite  trans- 
forms certain  important  aspects  of  our  whole  notion  of  the 
meaning  of  Evolution.  For  the  process  of  Evolution,  as  I 
now  view  it,  becomes,  not  the  history  of  the  growth  of  life 
from  the  lifeless,  but  the  history  of  the  differentiation  of 
one  colony,  as  it  were,  of  the  universal  society  from  the 
parent  social  order  of  the  finite  world  in  its  wholeness. 

Such,  in  some  detail,  are  my  theses.  They  need,  of 
course,  both  analysis  and  defense.  I  will  take  them  up  in 
their  order,  dwelling  perhaps  too  long  upon  the  first  thesis, 
upon  which  all  the  rest  depends. 

III. 

First,  then,  as  to  the  thesis  that  one  is  conscious  of  one's 
Ego  only  by  virtue  of  the  contrast  between  this  Ego  and 
some  consciousness  which  one  regards  as  external  to  one's 
finite  self. 

Speaking  in  psychological  terms,  one  can  say  that  our 
finite  self -consciousness  is  no  primitive  possession  at  all, 
but  is  the  hard-earned  outcome  of  the  contact  between  the 
being  capable  of  becoming  rational  and  the  rationally-dis- 
posed world  in  which  he  slowly  learns  to  move.  A  child 
becomes  self-conscious  only  by  degrees.  When,  as  infant, 
l.-, 


208  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

he  cries  for  his  food,  or  even,  when  more  intelligent,  shows 
lively  disappointment  if  his  expectations  are  not  met,  he  is 
not  yet  self-conscious.  When  later,  as  older  child,  he  struts 
about,  playing  soldier,  or  shyly  hides  from  strangers,  or 
asks  endless  questions  merely  to  see  what  you  will  say,  or 
quarrels  with  his  fellows  at  play,  or  shrinks  from  reproof, 
or  uses  his  little  arts  to  win  praise  and  caresses,  he  is  self- 
conscious.  These  latter  conditions  are  all  of  them  such  as 
involve  a  contrast  between  his  own  deeds  and  meanings  and 
the  deeds  and  meanings  that  he  takes  to  be  those  of  other 
conscious  beings,  whom,  just  as  his  conscious  fellows,  he 
loves  or  hates,  fears  or  imitates,  regards  with  social  curi- 
osity, or  influences  by  devices  adapted  to  what  he  thinks  to 
be  their  states  of  mind.  In  brief,  then,  I  should  assert  here, 
as  a  matter  of  psychology,  what  I  have  elsewhere  worked 
out  more  at  length,  that  a  child  is  taught  to  be  self-conscious 
just  as  he  is •  taught  everything  else,  by  the  social  order  that 
brings  him  up.  Could  he  grow  up  alone  with  lifeless  na- 
ture, there  is  nothing  to  indicate  that  he  would  become  as 
self-conscious  as  is  now  a  fairly  educated  cat. 

But  in  the  present  paper  I  am  dealing,  not  with  psychol- 
ogy, but  with  certain  aspects  of  the  constitution  of  our 
knowledge.  Let  us  consider  briefly  our  self-consciousness, 
now  that  it  has  developed.  It  is  a  familiar  paradox  of  ideal- 
istic analysis  that  we  can  have  true  knowledge  of  ideas  or 
other  objects  of  consciousness  only  in  so  far  as  they  have 
first  been  presented  to  ourselves  in  our  own  inner  life. 
Whatever  I  know  must  be  really  known  to  me,  one  says, 
only  in  so  far  as  it  is  in  me.  I  know,  or  can  conceivably 
come  to  know,  my  own  states,  my  own  presentations,  my 
own  thoughts,  my  own  experiences.  Things  external  to  me 
can  be  known  only  in  so  far  as  they  first  appear  inside  my 
conscious  world.  When  I  pretend  to  know  something 
about  a  far-off  star,  that  something  which  I  know  proves, 
upon  analysis,  to  be  my  own  state,  my  experience,  or  my 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  209 

thought — nothing  else.  I  cannot  transcend  consciousness. 
And  consciousness  is  for  me  my  consciousness,  or,  at  least, 
can  always  come  to  be  regarded  as  mine.  "Das  'Ich 
denke,'"  says  Kant,  "muss  alle  meine  Vorstellungen  be- 
gleiten  konnen." 

Now  all  this  is,  in  one  sense,  quite  true.  There  is  an  as- 
pect of  knowledge  which  is  always  dependent  upon  my 
presentations,  my  direct  acquaintance  with  mental  contents. 
Without  such  direct  acquaintance,  I  have  no  knowledge. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  one  asks  a  little  more  closely 
about  the  implications  of  our  inner  consciousness,  one 
comes  upon  another,  a  strongly  contrasted,  and  a  highly 
momentous  aspect  of  our  human  knowledge.  And  this  as- 
pect is  indicated  by  the  well-known  fact  that  if  I  can  only 
really  know  my  own  inner  states  in  so  far  as  they  are  inner, 
still,  on  the  other  hand,  I  can  never  really  define  to  myself 
just  how  much  is  actually  presented  at  any  one  moment  to 
my  inner  life.  One  can  know  the  far-off  star  only  by  virtue 
of  ideas  and  experiences  that  get  presented  in  the  inner  life ; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  this  presentation,  merely  as  such,  is 
not  enough.  For  if  anything  present  in  the  inner  life  were, 
as  such,  at  once  and  altogether  known  to  me,  I  should  al- 
ways be  able  to  know  just  what  it  is,  just  how  much  it  is, 
that  now  constitutes  the  whole  filling  and  meaning  of  my 
inner  life.  But  alas,  I  never  can  find  out  in  all  my  life, 
precisely  the  whole  of  what  it  is  that  gets  presented  to  me  in 
any  one  moment.  Are  you  now  conscious  of  all  that  is  in 
your  field  of  vision,  e.  g.,  of  the  head  of  every  person  who  sits 
in  this  audience  within  this  instant's  range  of  your  vision  ? 
Obviously  you  are  not,  or  at  least  are  not  equally  conscious  of 
all  the  possible  objects  of  your  momentary  visual  attention. 
You  are  now  clearly  aware  only  of  what  you  are  now  at- 
tending to,  and  not  of  all  the  contents  that  are  present  but 
that  you  merely  might  attend  to  if  you  chose.  But  once 
more,  what  is  precisely  the  whole  of  what  you  are  now  at 


210  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

tending  to — words,  thoughts,  sights,  faces  ?  It  is  impossible 
just  now  exhaustively  to  tell  yourself,  unless — unless  you 
first  attend  to  your  own  process  of  attention,  capriciously 
fixate  its  normal  fluctuating  attitudes,  and  so  give  an  arti- 
ficially prepared  account  of  a  deliberately  falsified  situation. 
The  inner  life,  as  we  get  it,  is  conscious,  but  normally  very 
unequally  self-conscious  —  possesses  contents,  but  cannot 
precisely  define  to  itself  what  they  are ;  seeks  not  to  hold 
the  present,  but  to  fly  to  the  next ;  scorns  the  immediate,  the 
presented,  and  looks  endlessly  for  the  oncoming,  the  sought, 
the  wished-for,  the  absent,  so  that  the  inner  eye  gazes  on 
a  flowing  stream  of  events,  but  beholds  rather  what  they 
hint  at  than  what  they  present. 

Now  it  is  this  other,  this  curiously  contrasted  aspect,  of 
our  finite  knowledge,  that  constitutes  one  of  the  deepest 
problems  of  the  life  of  human  reason.  I  can  know  only 
what  can  get  presented  to  me.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
most  of  what  gets  presented  to  me  always  escapes  my 
knowledge.  I  know  not  the  merely  presented,  as  such,  but 
only  that  which  in  the  presented  facts  I  can  hold,  apper- 
ceive,  contrast  with  other  contents,  and  define  as  to  the  real 
meaning  of  this  object  which  I  am  to  know.  But  alas,  the 
moment  flits.  What  I  now  know  turns  into  what  I  just 
now  knew,  even  while  I  reflect  upon  it.  The  direct  gets  lost 
in  the  indirect,  the  instant  in  the  imperfectly  known  series 
of  states ;  and  my  best  approach  to  finite  knowledge  appears 
as  only  a  sort  of  substituting  of  expectations  and  of  mem- 
ories for  the  desired  presentations.  If,  then,  on  the  one 
hand,  I  can  know  only  my  own  ideas,  states,  thoughts,  pres- 
entations, our  present  unhappy  result  seems  to  be  that,  as  a 
fact,  owing  to  the  ceaseless  flux  of  consciousness,  I  cannot 
fully  know  even  these.  For,  once  more,  I  can  know  only 
what  I  can  examine  with  steadily  fixated  attention ;  but 
while  I  fixate  my  attention  upon  the  inner  object,  it  changes 
even  while  I  observe  it.  Only  the  presented  can  be  known : 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  211 

this  idealistic  proposition  seems  to  be  mockingly  answered 
by  the  fairly  tragic  counter-assertion :  Not  even  the  pre- 
sented is,  as  such,  known. 

In  view  of  these  paradoxes  of  our  fmitude,  in  view  of  the 
fact  that  only  the  presented  can,  as  such,  be  known,  while 
the  presented  never  stays  long  enough  in  one  moment  of 
consciousness  to  allow  us  fully  to  know  what  it  is,  the  ac- 
tual situation  of  our  human  knowledge  is  simply  this  :  What 
is  always  most  clearly  present  to  our  consciously  inquiring 
intelligence  is  the  conceived  relation  between  some  content 
now  immediately  apprehended  but  very  imperfectly  compre- 
hended, and  that  which,  as  we  hope,  believe,  or  expect,  will 
be  or  would  be  apprehended,  when  we  come  more  fully  to 
know,  or  if  we  now  more  fully  knew  the  meaning  of  this 
immediate  datum.  What  I  now  experience  leads  me  to  ex- 
pect another  experience.  My  conscious  knowledge  is,  then, 
mainly  of  this  relation  of  transition  from  the  immediate 
fact  to  the  expected  outcome.  Or  again,  what  I  now  experi- 
ence leads  me  to  believe  that,  were  I  otherwise  situated,  I 
should  apprehend  such  and  such  other  facts.  My  knowledge 
is  here  again  consciously  concerned  with  the  relation  be- 
tween my  actual  and  my  conceived  possible  experience. 
Or,  once  more,  I  now  have  passing  through  my  mind  an 
assertion,  a  belief,  an  opinion.  And  I  am  thinking  just 
what  it  is  that  I  mean  by  this  opinion.  In  this  case,  my 
meaning  is  partly  presented  to  me,  partly  conceived  as  a 
more  fully  developed  meaning,  which  I  should  get  presented, 
or  shall  find  presented,  upon  a  further  consideration  of  what 
I  am  aiming  to  do. 

Thus,  you  see,  the  original  paradox  of  our  idealistic  an- 
alysis gets  corrected  by  this  other  paradox.  To  the  unknow- 
ableneas  of  whatever  cannot  get  presented  is  now  opposed 
the  equal  unknowableness  of  whatever  merely  gets  immedi- 
ately presented,  without  being  held  through  a  constant  inner 
appeal  from  what  is  presented  to  what  in  future  will  be 


212  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

presented,  or  to  what  conceivably  would  be  presented,  were 
consciousness  otherwise  determined.  I  know  only  my  own 
states  and  ideas  ;  but  those  I  know  only  by  virtue  of  their 
conceived  relation  to  states  and  ideas  that  will  be,  or  that 
would  be,  under  other  conditions,  or  in  other  moments,  the 
contents  of  my  experience. 

But,  from  this  point  of  view,  the  nature  of  the  world  of 
our  knowledge  gets  transformed.  Our  only  approach  to 
that  ideal  of  knowledge  which  complete  and  fixated  presen- 
tation would  involve  if  we  had  it,  is  afforded  us  by  the  im- 
perfectly presented  relation  between  fleeting  actual  presen- 
tations and  conceived  possible  presentations.  And  therefore 
you  will  observe  at  once  that  my  notion  of  my  own  Ego  and 
of  its  contents  depends  upon  a  certain  contrast  between 
these  contents  and  a  conceived  world  of  actual  or  possible 
experience  beyond  this  Ego.  For  what  I  come  nearest  to 
knowing  at  any  moment  is  the  relation  between  imperfectly 
grasped  immediate  contents  and  the  conceived  experience 
beyond  the  moment.  It  is  indeed  true,  as  idealism  is  accus- 
tomed to  say,  that  of  a  Ding-an-sich,  out  of  relation  to  pos- 
sible knowledge,  I  have  and  can  have  no  sort  of  knowledge 
or  conception.  For,  as  soon  as  I  try  to  tell  what  such  a 
Ding-an-sich  is,  I  turn  it  into  actual  or  conceived  possible 
experience,  and  conceive  it  only  as  in  such  experience. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  my  whole  knowledge  of  my  inner 
finite  Self  and  of  its  meaning  is  dependent  upon  the  contrast 
between  the  immediate  experiences  of  this  self  and  a  world 
of  abstractly  possible  or  of  genuine  experiences  not  pre- 
sented to  any  moment  of  my  inner  self  as  such.  Thus,  all 
my  finite  knowledge  involves  as  much  mediation  as  it  con- 
tains immediacy — assures  me  of  fact  only  by  sending  me 
elsewhere  for  truth ;  lets  me  know  something,  never  the 
whole,  of  my  actual  experience,  but  through  its  contrast  with 
possible  experience ;  verifies  merely  by  presupposing  experi- 
ences now  unverified ;  instructs  me  by  suggesting  further 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  213 

problems  ;  tells  me  who  I  am  by  indicating  whither  I  am  to 
go  to  look  for  my  true  self;  suggests  fulfillment  of  insight, 
yet  all  the  while  sending  me  out  to  wander  for  more  insight ; 
arouses  the  question,  What  do  I  mean  ?  at  the  very  mo- 
ment when  I  am  attempting  to  answer  the  question,  What 
is  the  experienced  datum  ? 

Now  this  realm  of  contrasts,  of  the  light  of  present  ex- 
perience and  of  the  shadow  of  possible  or  of  distant  other 
experience,  of  presentation  and  of  thought ;  this  dwelling  in 
hope  rather  than  in  fulfillment,  in  search  for  a  lost  self 
rather  than  in  enjoyment  of  a  present  self ;  this  realm,  I 
say,  and  this  dwelling  constitute  the  inner  finite  life  of 
every  one  of  us,  in  so  far  as  he  lives  rationally  at  all.  My 
actual  inner  life  is,  then,  always  contrasted  with  experience 
other  than  is  now  mine  ;  and  the  problem  of  my  intellectual 
life,  whatever  my  worldly  calling,  is  this  :  Where  is  the 
rest  of  my  experience  ?  or,  What  is  the  content  of  the  other 
experience  with  which  mine  is  even  now  contrasted  ? 

But  it  is,  of  course,  vain  to  regard  my  inner  view  of  my- 
self as  constituted  solely  by  the  contrast  between  my  indi- 
vidual presentation  and  a  possible  inner  experience  that  I 
view  as  merely  my  own  private,  but  still  individually  possi- 
ble experience.  My  possible  experience  and  the  world  of 
other  experience  than  is  now  mine — these  terms,  in  a  wide 
but  an  essentially  human  sense,  constantly  include  not 
merely  the  conceived  experiences  that  I  alone  in  my  indi- 
vidual capacity  am  likely  ever  to  have,  or  to  find  individu- 
ally accessible,  but  also  the  whole  world  of  experiences  that 
other  human  beings  either  have  had,  or  will  have,  or  may 
have.  The  upper  Nile  valley  is,  in  the  general  and  abstract 
sense,  a  possible  experience  of  mine;  but  I  individually 
shall  doubtless  never  come  to  get  that  experience.  Yet  the 
upper  Nile  valley  is,  and  has  been,  a  system  of  actual  and 
of  accessibly  possible  experiences  for  very  many  of  my  fel- 
low-men. When  I  conceive  the  upper  Nile  valley,  there  are 


214  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

presented  to  my  inner  life  words,  images,  map-experiences, 
and  the  like ;  and  these  I  know  as  meaning  something  to 
me,  in  so  far  as  I  contrast  these  relatively  immediate  data 
with  the  conceived  contents  of  the  experience  of  other  men 
who  more  directly  verify  what  I  only  conceive  as  to  that 
region.  And,  in  fact,  the  whole  contents  of  my  individual 
experience  get  regarded  as  one  conscious  system  of  remem- 
bered and  expected  contents,  in  so  far  as,  in  conception,  I 
contrast  my  own  private  inner  life  with  the  experiences 
which  I  attribute  to  my  actual  or  conceived  fellows.  I 
often  say  that  my  own  inner  life,  as  a  whole,  past  and  fu- 
ture, actual  and  accessibly  possible,  is  better  known  to  me, 
is  more  immediate,  is  more  accessible  to  me,  than  is  your 
inner  life.  But  what  do  I  mean  by  saying  this  ?  Surely 
both  my  past  and  my  future  are  now  as  truly  and  literally 
unpresentable  to  me  as  are  your  inner  states.  I  have  now 
only  my  memories  of  my  past,  as  I  have  only  my  beliefs  as 
to  your  inner  states.  Directly  I  can  now  verify  neither  set 
of  ideas.  What  I  mean  by  the  relative  intimacy  and  acces- 
sibility of  my  own  individual  past  is,  then,  only  the  fact 
that  my  notion  of  my  past  has  a  "  warmth,"  a  definiteness, 
a  sort  of  inner  assurance,  which  contracts  with  the  notion 
that  I  form  of  the  past  of  any  other  man. 

You  see,  whatever  way  I  turn,  I  am  definable  to  myself 
only  in  terms  of  a  contrast  with  other  experience  which 
might,  abstractly  speaking,  be  conceived  as  mine,  but 
which,  as  a  fact,  is  viewed  either  as  now  inaccessible  in 
comparison  with  my  present  experience,  or  else  as  the  actual 
or  possible  experience  of  my  fellow,  and  so  as  now  more  re- 
mote than  even  my  own  relatively  warm  and  quasi-accessi- 
ble, although  actually  unpresentable  past  experience  appears 
to  me  to  be.  But  to  define  any  sphere  whatever  as  the 
sphere  of  my  own  finite  life,  i.  e.,  to  define  my  life  either  as 
the  sphere  of  my  momentary  finite  life,  or  as  the  sphere  of 
my  whole  human  individuality,  involves  in  each  case  a  con- 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  215 

trast  between  what  is  within  my  denned  Ego,  in  the  way  of 
relatively  realized,  or  warm,  or  accessible  contents  of  expe- 
rience, and  what  is  beyond  my  denned  Ego,  as  a  sphere  of 
experiences  that,  abstractly  speaking,  I  regard  as  possibly 
mine,  while,  as  a  fact,  I  contrast  them  with  mine,  as  being 
really  somehow  beyond  me,  and  relatively  inaccessible  to 
me.  These  other  experiences,  which  are  not  mine  in  pre- 
cisely the  degree  in  which  what  I  call  mine  is  viewed  as 
belonging  to  me — these  other  experiences  are,  primarily,  the 
actual  experiences  of  other  men.  My  opinion  means,  in 
general,  my  opinion  as  contrasted  with  opinions  which  I 
attribute  to  other  men.  My  private  experience  means,  pri- 
marily, whatever  nobody  else  but  myself  has  experienced, 
and  is  therefore  defined  by  contrast  with  the  conception  of 
what  everybody  else  has  experienced.  In  brief,  take  away 
the  concept  of  that  world  of  abstractly  possible  other  expe- 
rience, which  might  be  mine,  or  which  would  be  mine,  if  I 
were  you,  or  Caesar,  or  any  one  else,  or  which  would  now 
be  mine  if  I  were  once  more  my  past  self — take  all  this 
other  experience  out  of  my  conception,  and  forthwith 
I  lose  all  means  of  becoming  conscious  of  my  experience 
as  mine,  or  of  knowing  what  I  mean  either  by  my  whole 
individuality,  or  by  my  present  Ego. 

IV. 

So  far,  then,  for  our  first  thesis.  To  myself,  I  am  I,  not 
merely  in  so  far  as  my  inner  contents  get  presented  to  me, 
but  in  so  far  as  I  contrast  my  experience  present,  or  the 
sum  total  of  my  conceived  individual  experience,  with  an 
experience  which  is,  in  some  sense,  not  mine,  but  which  is 
conceived  as  other  than  mine. 

But  now  what  warrant  have  I,  philosophically  speaking, 
for  assuming  that  there  is  any  other  experience  than  mine 
at  all — any  experience  past  or  future,  remote  or  warm,  like 
my  present  experience,  or  unlike  it  ?  Is  this  merely  a  prac- 


216  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

tically  warranted  assertion  of  common-sense,  or  has  it  a 
deeper  philosophical  basis  ? 

The  general  answer  to  this  question  is  simply  that  I  know 
the  presented  experience  as  such,  and  in  so  far  as,  in  passing 
it  is  imperfectly  grasped  at  all,  only  by  virtue  of  its  contrast 
to  the  conceived  other  experience.  Without  knowledge  that 
the  other  experience  is,  there  can  be  then  no  meaning  in  say- 
iiig  that  the  presented  experience  itself  exists.  That  the 
present  is,  he  alone  can  say  who  regards  the  past  and  future 
as  real.  That  I  as  this  individual  am,  I  can  say  only  if  I 
contrast  myself  with  some  conceived  other  experience.  The 
judgment :  "  There  is  experience,"  can  have  meaning  only 
if  one  defines  some  experience  that  is  to  be  thus  real.  But 
the  only  way  to  define  any  finite  experience  is  by  its  con- 
trast with  other  experience.  The  total  object  of  true  knowl- 
edge is  therefore  never  the  immediate  experience  of  my  own 
state  as  such  and  alone,  although  there  never  is  any  knowl- 
edge without  some  immediate  experience  as  one  of  its  ele- 
ments. The  judgment :  "  There  is  experience  "  means,  then, 
for  any  finite  being,  "  There  is  my  finite  experience,  known 
as  somehow  contrasted  with  other  experience  than  what  is 
here  presented  as  mine."  Thus,  then,  the  conviction  that 
there  is  other  experience  than  what  is  presented  to  me  here, 
has  not  only  a  common-sense  value  but  a  philosophical 
warrant.  But  if  one  says:  "No,  but  the  contrast  is  itself 
something  given,  and  so  is  not  the  contrast  between  my  ex- 
perience and  any  experience  that  is  really  known  to  be  other 
than  mine,  but  is  only  a  contrast  between  my  presented 
experience  and  one  that  is  not  presented  as  other  than  mine, 
but  that  is  merely  conceived  as  other  than  mine  " — then  to 
this  objection,  once  more,  the  answer  is,  that  the  very  concep- 
tion of  other  experience  than  what  is  now  presented  as  mine 
either  actually  relates  to  such  other  experience,  or  else  is  a 
meaningless  conception.  But  if  it  is  to  be  meaningless,  even 
while  it  takes  itself,  as  it  does,  to  have  a  meaning,  then  this 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  217 

conception  that  always  shadows  my  presentations,  this  con- 
ception of  other  experience  than  mine,  is  itself  an  experi- 
ence that  is  in  fact  other  than  it  takes  itself  to  be.  For  it 
always  takes  itself  to  mean  something ;  although,  unless  it 
actually  does  refer  to  other  experience  than  mine,  it  is  mean- 
ingless. But  to  say  that  a  conception,  or  any  other  presented 
content  of  consciousness,  is  other  than  it  seems,  and  is,  for 
example,  really  meaningless  when  it  seems  to  mean  some- 
thing, this  is  already  to  distinguish  between  my  erroneous 
experience  of  its  nature,  and  another,  a  fuller  experience  of 
its  nature  which,  if  I  knew  it  better,  I  should  have.  But  thus 
to  distinguish  between  what  my  experience  really  is  and 
what  it  seems  to  be,  is  simply  to  distinguish  between  a  pre- 
sented and  a  not  presented  aspect  of  the  very  experience 
in  question.  For  what  can  one  say  of  an  experience  which 
is  not  what  it  seems  to  be,  and  which  is  yet  only  a  presenta- 
tion after  all — a  mere  matter  of  the  instant  in  which  it 
happens  to  live  ?  If  an  experience,  viz.,  here  the  conception 
of  other  experience  than  mine,  presents  itself  as  meaning 
something  beyond  the  moment  when  it  really  means  noth- 
ing beyond  the  moment,  then  this  very  experience  itself  is 
really  other  than  the  experience  as  it  is  presented,  and  once 
more  one  gets  a  real  contrast  between  my  experience  as 
presented,  and  related  experience  which  is  not  presented. 
The  conception  of  other  experience  than  mine  must,  there- 
fore, in  any  case,  have  relation  to  a  real  experience  which 
is  other  than  my  presentation. 

Thus,  then,  that  there  is  some  experience  not  individu- 
ally mine,  is  an  assertion  precisely  as  sure  as  the  assertion 
that  my  own  experience  is.  For  neither  assertion  has  mean- 
ing apart  from  the  other.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  contrast  my  experience  with  any  Ding-an-aich, 
existent  apart  from  all  experience,  because  the  instant  that 
I  tell  what  I  mean  by  a  Ding-fin -«/«•//,  1  have  converted  it 
into  an  experience,  actual  or  possible,  and  other  than  mine. 


218  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

But  finally,  in  this  connection,  one  must  still  further 
insist  that  our  now  frequently  illustrated  contrast  cannot 
ultimately  be  one  between  my  presented  experience  and  an 
experience  other  than  mine  which  is  barely  a  possible  ex- 
perience, and  not  an  actual  experience  at  all.  A  possible 
experience,  not  now  mine,  is  a  notion  that  has  a  very  sound 
meaning  in  case  it  has  some  direct  or  indirect  relation  to 
a  real  experience  not  now  mine.  But  bare  possibilities,  to 
which  no  actualities  correspond,  are  indeed  meaningless. 
Are  there  real  facts  or  aspects  of  experience  not  now  pre- 
sented to  me,  then  I  can  easily  define  these  in  terms  of 
logical  possibilities.  But  possibilities  need  realities  to  give 
them  meaning.  There  must  then  be  other  experience  than 
mine,  not  merely  as  possible  experience,  but  as  actual  ex- 
perience. Given  such  actual  experience,  there  is  not  only 
convenience,  but  rational  necessity  in  the  attempt  to  define 
its  nature  in  terms  of  all  sorts  of  conceived  possibilities ; 
but  unless  you  have  some  actual  experience  upon  which  to 
base  your  possibilities,  then  the,  possibilities  themselves  be- 
come mere  contradictions.  A  barely  possible  experience  is, 
as  Mr.  Bradley  has  well  said,  the  same  as  an  impossible  ex- 
perience. 

v. 

There  is,  then,  an  universe  of  other  actual  experience 
than  my  own  finite  experience,  presented  or  remembered. 
Were  this  central  truth  not  known  to  me,  I  should  have  no 
means  of  being  conscious  of  myself  as  this  finite  Ego.  The 
general  constitution  of  this  world  of  other  experience,  in  its 
wholeness,  I  must  here  leave  to  metaphysics.  We  are  now 
concerned  with  the  finite  aspects  of  the  complex  of  experi- 
ences with  which,  as  human  beings,  we  have  to  do. 

Concretely,  we  get  information  about  the  contents  of 
experience  not  our  own,  when  we  communicate  socially 
with  our  fellows.  And  the  essence  of  social  communication 
is  this :  My  fellow  does  something  in  a  certain  situation^ 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  219 

deals  with  his  environment  so  or  so.  He  uses  tools,  utters 
words,  makes  gestures.  If  these  deeds  of  his  are  new  to  nie, 
they  do  not  convey  to  me  his  inner  experience.  These  deeds 
are  so  far,  for  me,  phenomena  in  my  own  experience.  I 
cannot  directly  view  my  fellow's  experience  at  all.  How. 
then,  is  a  word,  or  gesture,  or  other  deed,  which  as  yet  con- 
veys no  meaning  to  me,  to  acquire  a  meaning,  or  to  become 
expressive  to  me  of  my  fellow's  inner  life  as  such  ?  The 
answer  is,  that,  from  infancy  on,  my  fellow's  expressive  acts 
get  a  meaning  to  me  as  the  suggestion  of  his  concrete  inner 
life,  just  in  so  far  as  I  am  able  to  imitate  these  deeds  of  his 
by  bodily  acts  of  my  own,  brought  to  pass  under  conditions 
like  those  in  which  he,  my  fellow,  acts.  For  when  I  defi- 
nitely repeat  a  bodily  act  that  expresses  any  human  mean- 
ing, the  act,  as  I  repeat  it,  under  definite  conditions,  gets  for 
me  an  inner  meaning  which  I  could  never  grasp  so  long  as 
I  merely  observed  such  an  act  from  without,  as  an  event  in 
my  perceived  phenomenal  world.  But  this  inner  meaning 
which  the  act  gets  when  I  repeat  it,  becomes  for  me  the 
objective  meaning  of  the  act  as  my  fellow  performs  it ;  and 
thus  the  meaning  of  the  imitated  act,  interpreted  for  me  at 
the  moment  of  my  imitation,  gets  conceived  as  the  real 
meaning,  the  inner  experience  of  my  fellow,  at  the  moment 
when  he  performs  the  act  which  is  my  model.  If  you  laugh, 
I  know  what  you  mean  just  in  so  far  as,  under  similar  con- 
ditions, I  can  join  with  you  and  laugh  heartily  also,  and 
can  thus,  by  fully  imitating  your  deed,  get  a  sense  of  your 
meaning.  But  if  I  see  you  laughing  under  circumstances 
that  absolutely  forbid  me  even  to  conceive  myself  as  imitat- 
ing your  expression  of  mirth,  then  I  have  frankly  to  say 
that  I  do  not  in  the  least  know  what  you  mean  by  laughing 
at  just  this  situation,  and  so  cannot  conceive  in  so  far  what 
your  inner  experience  is.  If  I  see  you  playing  cards,  or 
chess,  I  can  only  make  out  what  your  inner  experience  is  in 
case  I  learn  the  cards,  the  pieces,  the  rules,  or  the  moves  of 


220  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

the  game,  and  proceed  to  play  it  myself.  If  I  want  to  know 
what  the  poets  mean  when  they  sing  of  love,  I  must  myself 
become  a  lover.  When  I  have  imitated,  in  my  measure, 
the  lover's  situation,  and  the  lover's  sincerely  expressed 
devotion,  then  I  know  something  of  what  love  meant  for 
the  poet.  In  general,  I  believe  in  other  human  experience 
than  mine  in  so  far  as  I  notice  other  people's  expressive 
acts,  and  then  gradually  interpret  them  through  social  con- 
formity. What  I  cannot  interpret  by  imitation,  I  cannot 
definitely  realize  as  another  man's  experience.  Yet  as  my 
imitations  always  remain  incomplete,  and  my  interpreta- 
tions correspondingly  indefinite,  I  have  constantly  to  con- 
trast my  fellow's  experience,  so  far  as  I  can  realize  it,  with 
my  fellow's  experience  so  far  as  it  attracts  my  efforts  to 
interpret  it,  but  also  sets  a  limit  to  the  success  of  these  efforts. 
And  thus  I  get  a  notion  of  a  boundless  world  of  human 
meanings  which  I  can  partially,  but  not  wholly,  grasp.  In 
the  effort,  by  social  conformity,  i.  e.,  by  imitation  of  expres- 
sive actions,  to  interpret  such  inadequately  grasped  human 
meanings,  a  great  part  of  my  social  life  consists.  This  effort 
is  constantly  supplemented  by  my  efforts  to  convey  my 
own  meanings  to  others ;  and  thus  my  self -consciousness 
and  my  social  consciousness,  each  helped  and  each  limited 
by  the  other,  since  each  exists  only  in  contrast  with  the 
other,  get  organized  and  developed  in  the  endless  giving 
and  taking  of  social  communications. 

Thus  far,  then,  we  have  been  illustrating  our  first  and 
second  theses.  Their  application  to  our  notion  of  Na- 
ture remains  to  be  developed. 

VI. 

So  far,  then,  a  reality,  external  to  my  finite  Ego,  means 
a  world  of  other  experience  with  which  my  experience  is 
contrasted.  This  world  is  concretely  defined,  in  the  first 
place,  as  the  world  of  other  human  experiences  than  my 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  221 

own.  What  these  experiences  actually  are,  I  learn  only  by 
myself  repeating  the  expressive  deeds  of  my  fellows,  and 
by  attributing  to  these  deeds,  when  performed  by  my 
fellows,  an  inner  meaning  similar  to  the  one  which  I 
more  directly  observe  in  the  deeds  when  I  myself  repeat 
them  under  conditions  similar  to  those  in  which  my  fel- 
lows have  already  performed  them.  Of  course,  no  such 
interpretation  of  any  human  meaning  is  infallible ;  but  I 
am  verifiably  right  in  saying  that,  at  every  step,  this  social 
process  does  really  bring  me  into  relation  with  experience 
which,  until  I  performed  the  deeds  of  social  imitativeness, 
was  not  mine.  This  concrete  new  experience,  which  was 
not  mine  until  I  imitated,  was  then  before  my  imitation, 
at  the  very  least,  a  possible  experience  other  than  mine. 
The  whole  social  world  is  full  of  suggestions  of  such  actu- 
ally possible  experiences.  If  every  real  possibility  must, 
logically  speaking,  have  a  basis  in  actuality,  I  am  philo- 
sophically warranted  in  saying  that  all  these  suggestions  of 
other  human  experience  which  social  imitation  interprets, 
and  which  common-sense  trusts,  do  as  a  fact  stand  not  only 
for  a  barely  possible  enlargement  of  my  inner  Ego,  but  for 
real  experience  which,  however  fallible  my  private  inter- 
pretations of  it  may  be,  has  an  actuality  contrasted  with, 
and  existent  apart  from,  my  finite  individuality.  The  world 
of  my  fellows'  experiences  may  not  be  real  just  as  I,  in  my 
narrowness,  interpret  it.  But  this  world  is  still,  from  the 
philosophical  as  from  the  common-sense  point  of  view,  a 
real  world,  a  complex  of  experiences  other  than  mine,  and 
more  or  less  imperfectly  communicated  to  me.  And  thus 
it  is  that  one  in  general  defines  the  metaphysics  of  the 
social  consciousness.  You  observe  once  more  the  essential 
relativity  of  the  individual  Ego  and  the  social  Alter. 
Neither  conception  has  any  clearness  apart  from  the  other. 
But  now,  in  our  human  world  of  experience,  there  are, 
yonder,  the  phenomena  of  physical  nature.  Our  next 


222  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

question  is,  in  what  sense  are  we  to   attribute  reality  to 
them? 

J.  S.  Mill's  answer  to  this  question  is  well  known,  and 
is,  in  one  aspect,  closely  and  instructively  similar  to  Kant's 
answer,  despite  all  the  differences  between  the  two  philoso- 
phers as  to  other  matters.  The  phenomena  of  nature,  e.  g., 
the  upper  Nile  valley,  the  other  side  of  yonder  wall,  or  of 
the  moon — these  one  conceives  as  systems  of  possible  ex- 
periences, experiences  which,  in  general,  I  now  have  not, 
but  could  have  under  definable  conditions.  Nature,  as 
such,  contains,  apart  from  the  bodies  of  my  fellows  and  of 
the  higher  animals,  no  objects  that  I  conceive  as  communi- 
cating to  me  any  now  intelligible  inner  intents,  meanings, 
plans,  or  other  socially  interesting  contents.  Nature  con- 
sists of  masses  of  "  possibilities  of  sensation."  The  problem 
is,  in  what  sense  have  these  possibilities  of  experience  any 
inner  or  self  existent  sort  of  reality  ?  Is  nature  a  Ding-an- 
sich,  whose  reality  is  absolutely  inscrutable,  but  self-pos- 
sessed ?  The  answer  to  this  last  and  special  question  is 
that  such  a  notion  is  simply  meaningless.  I  can  contrast 
my  experience  with  other  experience,  and  can  regard  my- 
self as  limited  by  facts  of  experience  not  now  presented  to 
me.  And  such  a  way  of  regarding  myself  is,  as  we  have 
seen,  absolutely  essential  to  even  my  self-consciousness. 
But  I  cannot  contrast  experience  with  what  is  no  experi- 
ence at  at  all.  Even  to  say  that  there  now  exist  certain 
possibilities  of  experience  which  I  do  not  realize,  is  to  raise 
the  issue  already  several  times  touched  upon  in  the  fore- 
going. A  bare  possibility  is  a  mere  fiction.  It  cannot  be 
real.  To  my  true  definition  of  a  given  experience  as  merely 
possible  for  me,  there  may  correspond  an  experience  which, 
as  it  is  in  itself,  is  very  unlike  my  private  definition  of  the 
real  possibility.  But  if  I  am  right  in  saying,  "  There  is  a 
possibility  of  experience  not  now  mine,"  then  to  such  a  real 
possibility  some  sort  of  real  experience,  other  than  mine, 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  2?3 

must  correspond.  The  question  arises :  Is  there  any  such 
real  experience  behind  those  nature-facts  which  we  conceive 
is  our  own  possible  experiences  1 

But  there  is  another  aspect  of  natural  phenomena  which 
perhaps  brings  us  nearer  to  our  goal.  The  reality  of  the  facts 
of  nature,  when  we  actually  confirm  their  presence,  is 
always  viewed  as  capable  of  being  submitted  to  social 
tests.  The  real  nature-phenomenon  is  not  merely  con- 
ceived as  the  object  of  my  possible  experience,  but  in  gener- 
al as  the  object  of  my  fellows'  actual  or  possible  experience 
as  well.  If  the  star  that  I  see  is  a  real  star,  then  you,  if 
you  are  a  normal  observer  can  see  that  star  as  well  as  I. 
This  is  th«  common-sense  presupposition  as  to  nature. 
Natural  objects  are  viewed  as  phenomena  that  are,  in  some 
sense,  public  property,  in  so  far  as  many  different  human 
observers  could  make  them  objects  of  possible  inspection. 
The  presupposition  of  common-sense  is,  that  many  observers 
could,  on  occasion,  verify  the  same  natural  fact ;  so  that 
the  physical  world  will  consist,  for  common-sense,  not 
merely  of  possibilities  of  my  individual  experience,  but  of 
possibilities  of  common  experience  on  the  part  of  many 
observers. 

Here  surely  is  a  well-known,  but  a  paradoxical  aspect  of 
our  nature-experience.  I  cannot  observe  your  mind,  but,  as 
common-sense  supposes,  I  can  observe  the  same  external 
natural  fact  that  you  observe.  This  presupposition  is.  in 
effect,  a  basis  in  terms  of  which  we  often  define  the  facts  of 
nature.  What  I  alone  experience,  belongs  to  my  inner  life. 
What  you  can  experience  as  well  as  I,  is  as  such  a  physical 
fact,  and,  mind  you,  this  means  that,  when  we  deal  with 
nature-phenomena,  common-sense  supposes  us,  not  merely  to 
have  similar  inner  states,  but  to  refer  to  actually  the  same 
fact  If  you  as  finite  being  count  ten,  and  I  as  finite  being 
count  ten,  we  perform  similar  inner  acts,  but  our  objects 

are  so  far  not  the  same ;  for  the  ten  that  you  count  is  not 
1C 


STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 


the  ten  that  I  count.  We  can  in  this  case  be  referring  to 
the  same  truth  only  if  there  is,  as  a  fact,  some  sort  of  extra- 
human  reality  possessed  by  the  truths  of  arithmetic,  and 
actually  referred  to  by  both  of  us.  But  just  such  extra- 
human  reality  common-sense  actually  attributes  to  the  facts 
of  nature.  If  ten  stones  lie  on  the  highway,  and  you  and 
I  count  them,  common-sense  supposes  that  though  your 
counting  of  ten  is  not  my  counting  of  ten,  though  your 
perception  of  the  stones  is  not  mine,  though  your  inner 
life  is  in  no  fashion,  here  noteworthy,  identical  with  mine, 
still  the  real  stones  that  I  count  are  identically  the  same 
as  the  real  stones  that  you  count.  Now  any  natural  fact, 
as  common  -sense  conceives  it,  could,  without  losing  its 
identity,  be  made  the  common  object  of  as  many  observers 
as  could  come  to  get  the  right  hints  of  its  nature  through 
their  inner  experience.  All  these  possible  observers,  so 
common-sense  holds,  would  really  refer  to  the  same  natural 
fact. 

The  nature-things,  then,  are  not  merely  possible  experi- 
ences for  me  ;  they  pretend  to  be  possible  objects  of  common 
experience  for  many  observers. 

Now  when  the  nature-facts  make  such  puzzling  demands 
upon  us  as  this,  there  are  only  two  ways  of  viewing  the 
situation  thus  created.  One  way  is  to  say  that  in  truth,  all 
this  common-sense  notion  of  nature  is  illusory.  As  a  fact, 
one  might  insist,  it  is  impossible  for  two  finite  observers  of 
nature  to  have  the  same  external  fact  actually  referred  to  by 
both  of  them  at  once.  What  one  means  is,  that,  as  our  social 
consciousness  indicates,  human  beings  have  many  similar 
experiences,  and  can  socially  convey  to  one  another  this 
similarity  of  their  inner  lives.  When  I  rejoice,  you  may 
rejoice  too  ;  yet  our  rejoicings  are  not  the  same,  but  only 
similar.  Just  so,  one  might  insist,  when  I  point  at  my  star, 
you  may  point  at  your  star  also.  But  what  happens  is  that 
your  experience  then  resembles  mine  ;  but  has  not  the 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  225 

same  outer  object  at  all.  Nature  is  the  sum-total  of  those 
facts  of  our  various  experiences,  concerning  which  our 
perceptual  experience  seems  most  easily  to  agree.  But 
this  agreement  means  merely  a  certain  social  communi- 
cable similarity  of  our  experiences — not  unity  or  sameness 
of  natural  object 

This,  I  say,  is  one  possible  hypothesis  as  to  nature.  But 
observe  at  once  :  There  is  one  class  of  nature-objects  in  case 
of  which  just  this  negative  and  sceptical  hypothesis  simply 
cannot  be  carried  out  without  destroying  the  very  basis  of 
our  social  consciousness  itself.  And  this  class  of  seeming 
outer  objects  is  made  up  of  the  very  bodies  of  our  human 
fellows  whom  we  observe,  and  with  whom  we  socially  com- 
municate. The  social  consciousness,  upon  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  our  very  self-consciousness  itself  depends  for  its  defini- 
tion in  finite  terms,  involves,  as  an  integral  part  of  its  unity, 
the  observation  of  certain  natural  phenomena  definable  as 
the  expressive  movements,  the  gestures,  words,  deeds,  of  our 
fellows.  Now  these  phenomena  are  not  merely  to  be  viewed 
as  reducible  to  the  possible  similar  experiences  of  the  various 
people  who  may  observe  their  fellows  from  without.  For 
these  phenomena,  on  the  contrary,  have,  whoever  observes 
them,  their  identical  and  inner  aspect ;  for  they  indicate  the 
inner  life  of  the  social  fellow-being  who  thus  expresses  him- 
self. Many  of  you  are  now  observing  me.  Are  all  of  your 
various  inner  experiences  of  me  now  actually  referring  to 
the  same  fact,  external  to  you  but  having  for  me  its  pre- 
sented internal  aspect,  identically  the  same  whoever  it  is 
that  regards  himself  as  observing  my  movements  ?  The 
answer  is  here,  at  once :  Yes.  If  I  am  I,  and  am  communicat- 
ing to  you  through  deeds  which  are  represented  in  you  by 
systems  of  similar  experiences,  then,  when  you  experience, 
in  your  inner  lives,  the  observable  phenomenal  aspects  of 
these  my  deeds,  you  are  all  at  once  meaning,  referring  to, 
listening  to,  the  same  genuinely  real  object 


226  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

Paradox  though  it  be,  the  social  consciousness  insists 
that  the  same  fellow-man  can  phenomenally  manifest  his 
presence  to  as  many  observers  as  can  get  some  experience  of 
his  expressive  deeds.  All  these  observers  can  agree,  with 
due  care,  as  to  their  accounts  of  his  deeds.  These  deeds, 
then,  are  so  far  nature-phenomena,  like  any  others.  My 
movements  appear  to  any  one  of  you  in  space,  even  as  does 
this  desk.  So  far,  one  could  say,  the  fact  is  that  the  observ- 
ers have  experiences  that  are  similar  in  one  man's  case  to 
the  experiences  of  his  observing  fellow.  The  observed 
deeds  are  merely  such  similar  perceptions  in  the  various  ob- 
servers. The  various  observers  do  not  see  the  same  real 
deeds ;  but  they  do  possess  similar  perceptions,  which  they 
call  perceptions  of  expressive  deeds. 

But  no,  this  conclusion  the  social  consciousness  declines 
to  accept.  All  your  various  but  similar  individual  percep- 
tions of  my  deeds  really  refer  to  the  same  genuine  object, 
precisely  in  so  far  as  I  am  I,  and  in  so  far  as  it  is  my  inner 
experience  that  is  manifested  in  these  deeds.  Thus,  then, 
you  could  say  that,  if  this  desk  were  alone  here,  you  could 
indeed  so  far  talk  sceptically  of  phenomenal  experiences,  in 
various  observers,  which  only  seemed  to  be  experiences  re- 
lating to  the  same  object,  but  which  as  a  fact  do  not  demand 
the  real  sameness  of  their  object.  But  it  is  no  longer  so  if, 
in  terms  of  the  social  consciousness,  you  consider  not  the 
desk,  but  me  as  your  nature-object.  For  I  am  to  you  not 
only  nature-phenomenon,  represented  in  you  by  comparable 
and  merely  similar  perceptual  experiences  of  your  various 
private  worlds;  but  I  am,  as  communicating  fellow-man, 
the  same  outer  object  for  all  of  you. 

Now  a  similar  proposition  holds  true  of  any  fellow-man. 
Any  man  you  please  has  for  you  his  phenomenal  aspect. 
In  this  aspect  he  is  viewed  as  object  of  possible  experiences, 
and  the  real  facts  corresponding  to  this  view  are,  so  far,  ex- 
pressible by  saying  that  all  of  his  observant  fellows  have 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  227 

similar  experiences  whenever  they  come  into  certain  de- 
finable groups  of  relations  to  their  own  inner  worlds.  But 
this  man  has  another  existence  than  the  existence  of  certain 
images  that  his  fellows  form.  All  of  these  images  refer  to 
him,  to  the  same  man,  to  his  manifested  inner  experience, 
and  so  to  one  reality.  And  this  is  what  the  social  conscious- 
ness insists.  Give  up  that  insistence,  in  any  general  form, 
and  you  have  no  social  consciousness,  no  fellow-men  with 
similar  experiences,  no  definable  self-consciousness — yes, 
nothing  but  an  inexpressible  immediacy  of  inner  presenta- 
tions. But  hold  by  that  insistence,  and  what  can  you  say  ? 
I  answer :  You  can  and  must  say  that  to  one  portion  of  phe- 
nomenal nature,  viz.,  to  the  observed  bodily  movements  of 
your  fellows,  there  corresponds  an  inner  life  which  is  the 
same  in  essence,  however  many  may  be  the  phenomenal 
images  that  observers  form  of  it  when  they  refer  to  it  as 
a  reality. 

The  first  view  of  nature,  viz.,  that  nature  consists  of  a 
total  of  possible  experiences,  similar  in  various  observers, 
thus  fails  as  to  all  those  nature-objects  that  present  them- 
selves as  our  expressively  moving  fellows.  Our  fellows  are 
real  beings,  phenomenally  observable  from  without  by  as 
many  observers  as  you  please,  but  self-existent  as  masses  of 
inner  experience,  contrasted  with  one  another,  and  with  our 
own  experience*. 

But  now  how  can  you  separate  the  phenomenal  fellow, 
the  originally  real  finite  being,  the  original  of  your  notion 
of  your  non-Ego,  from  the  phenomenal  nature  of  which  he 
appears  as  a  part,  and  with  whose  existence  he  appears  to  be, 
in  all  his  life,  absolutely  continuous  ?  For  at  this  point 
there  returns  to  help  us  our  whole  knowledge  of  human 
nature  as  such.  A  man's  phenomenal  expressive  move- 
ments, objects  of  possible  experience  for  all  observers,  stand 
for,  and  phenomenally  accompany,  his  inner  life.  They 
then  are  real  manifestations  of  a  real  interior  finite  life. 


228  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND   EVIL. 

But  his  movements  cannot  be  thus  regarded  as  real  unless 
his  limbs,  his  muscles,  his  nerves,  his  brain,  his  circulatory 
and  nutritive  processes,  the  food  that  he  eats,  the  desk  from 
which  he  speaks,  the  air  that  he  breathes,  the  room  where 
he  speaks,  the  ancestors  from  whom  he  descended — yes,  in 
the  end,  the  whole  phenomenal  nature-order  with  which  he 
is  phenomenally  continuous,  unless  all  these  things  be  also 
regarded  as  real  in  the  same  general  sense,  viz.,  as  inner 
finite  experience.  In  short,  you  cannot  separate  your  phe- 
nomenal fellows  from  the  order  of  phenomenal  nature. 
The  continuity  between  man  and  nature,  known  to  us  first 
as  the  absolute  inseparability  of  the  expressive  movements 
of  our  fellows  from  the  nature-processes  in  which  these 
movements  appear  to  be  imbedded,  and  of  which  they  are 
phenomenally  a  part,  has  now  become,  in  the  light  of  our 
whole  experience  of  natural  phenomena,  an  all-embracing 
continuity,  extending  to  cerebral  and  to  general  physiolog- 
ical processes,  and  to  the  ancestry  and  evolution  of  the 
human  race,  so  that  the  highest  in  expressive  human  nature 
is  now  phenomenally  linked  by  the  most  intimate  ties  to 
the  simplest  of  physical  processes.  If,  then,  one's  fellow  is 
real,  the  whole  of  the  phenomenal  nature  from  which  his 
phenomenal  presence  is  continuous  must  be  real  in  the 
same  general  fashion. 

But  observe,  this  deduction  of  the  reality  of  the  natural 
objects  implies  something  very  significant  as  to  what  nature 
is.  The  only  possible  way  to  get  at  the  existence  of  a  finite 
non-Ego  is  through  some  form  of  the  social  consciousness. 
What  a  finite  non-Ego  is,  your  fellow  teaches  you  when  he 
communicates  to  you  the  fact  that  he  has  inner  experience, 
and  is  the  same  object,  however  many  observers  view  him. 
Now  if  his  continuity  with  the  phenomenal  nature  of  whose 
processes  his  observed  expressive  movements  are  an  insepa- 
rable and  continuous  part,  impels  you  to  say  that  if  he  is 
real  his  whole  body,  and  so,  in  the  end,  the  whole  nature  of 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  229 

which  that  body  is  an  inseparable  part  and  an  evolutionary 
product,  is  also  real,  in  an  inner  and  finite  sense,  then  the 
only  possible  way  to  interpret  this  relation  is  to  say :  "  Na- 
ture, by  itself,  is  a  system  of  finite  experience  which,  on 
occasion,  and  by  means  of  perfectly  continuous  evolution- 
ary processes,  passes  over  into,  or  differentiates  from  its  own 
organization,  the  communicative  form  of  socially  intelli- 
gible experience  that  you  and  I  call  human." 

VII. 

The  force  of  this  proof  is  limited,  of  course,  by  the  fact 
that  it  is  precisely  an  argument  from  continuity.  It  is  ca- 
pable of  endless  development  and  illustration ;  and  I  take  it 
to  be  the  only  possible  proof  that  nature  exists  in  any  way 
beyond  the  actual  range  of  our  more  or  less  similar  human 
experiences  of  nature's  observable  facts.  Yet  no  argument 
from  any  continuity  of  apparent  processes  has  absolute 
force.  It  does  not  follow  that  every  hypothetical  conception 
which  you  and  I  now  form  of  this  or  that  natural  process, 
e.  g.,  of  the  atoms,  or  of  gravitation,  corresponds  to  any  dis- 
tinct form  of  the  inner  nature-experience.  As  a  fact,  I  take 
it  that  our  scientifically  conceived  laws  of  nature  are  largely 
phenomenal  generalizations  from  very  superficial  aspects  of 
the  inner  life  of  nature,  and  that  very  much  indeed  of  what 
we  now  call  nature  has  existence  only  for  human  percep- 
tion and  thought,  as  a  matter  of  the  similarities  of  the  ex- 
periences of  various  human  observers.  But  my  point  is 
here  not  a  detailed  theory,  but  a  general  conception  of  na- 
ture. And  my  general  conception  is  this :  — There  is  a  vast 
system  of  finite  experience,  real  as  our  socially  communica- 
tive fellows  are  real,  and  manifesting  its  existence  to  us  just 
as  they  do,  viz.,  through  the  phenomena  which  appear  to 
our  senses  as  material  movements  in  space  and  time. 
What  this  inner  experience  is  we  know,  in  case  of  our 
human  fellows,  by  social  communication.  What  the  rest 


230  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

of  the  nature-experience  is,  we  can  only  make  out  very  in- 
directly. But  the  continuity  proves  that  the  nature-experi- 
ence passes  over,  on  occasion,  by  unbroken  although  vastly 
complex  processes,  into  the  form  of  human  experience.  All 
the  facts  grouped  together  as  the  doctrine  of  Evolution, 
make  this  continuity  seem  the  more  elaborate,  minute,  and 
significant,  the  better  we  know  it.  In  consequence  we  have 
no  sort  of  right  to  speak  in  any  way  as  if  the  inner  experi- 
ence behind  any  fact  of  nature  were  of  a  grade  lower  than 
ours,  or  less  conscious,  or  less  rational,  or  more  atomic. 
Least  of  all  have  we  a  right,  as  the  Mind  Stuff  theories  do, 
to  accept  our  hypothetical  atoms  as  corresponding  to  real 
nature-entities,  and  then  to  say  that  inorganic  nature  consists 
of  a  mass  of  scattered  sensations.  Of  the  reality  of  organ- 
ized experience  we  all  know ;  but  scattered  sensory  states 
are  mere  abstractions,  just  as  the  atoms  of  physics  are. 
There  is  no  evidence  for  the  reality  of  nature-facts  which  is 
not  defined  for  us  by  the  very  categories  of  the  social  con- 
sciousness. No  evidence,  then,  can  indicate  nature's  inner 
reality  without  also  indicating  that  this  reality  is,  like  that 
of  our  own  experience,  conscious,  organic,  full  of  clear 
contrasts,  rational,  definite.  We  ought  not  to  speak  of  dead 
nature.  We  have  only  a  right  to  speak  of  uncommunica- 
tive nature.  Natural  objects,  if  they  are  real  at  all,  are 
prima  facie  simply  other  finite  beings,  who  are,  so  to  speak, 
not  in  our  own  social  set,  and  who  communicate  to  us,  not 
their  minds,  but  their  presence.  For,  I  repeat,  a  real  being 
can  only  mean  to  me  other  experience  than  mine ;  and 
other  experience  does  not  mean  deadness,  unconsciousness, 
disorganization,  but  presence,  life,  inner  light. 

But  it  is  customary  to  say,  by  way  of  getting  rid  of  any 
sort  of  animism,  that  we  have  no  right  to  reason  by  mere 
analogy  from  our  inner  experience  to  anything  resembling 
life  in  inorganic  nature.  To  this  I  answer  that,  were  the 
foregoing  argument  one  from  analogy,  it  would  be  open  to 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  £31 

the  same  objections  as  could  be  urged  against  any  form  of 
animism.  But  the  whole  point  of  the  foregoing  analysis 
has  been  that  you  do  not  first  find  nature  as  something  real, 
and  occult,  and  then  proceed  to  argue  from  analogy  that 
this  occult  reality  is  alive.  On  the  contrary,  I  have  first  in- 
sisted that  occult  realities,  things  in  themselves,  in  the  ab- 
stract sense,  are  absurd  ;  that  the  social  consciousness  gives 
us  the  only  notion  of  finite  reality  that  we  can  have  ;  and 
that  the  social  consciousness  recognizes,  as  real,  beings  hav- 
ing conscious  experience.  After  this  point  was  reached,  and 
only  then,  could  we  turn,  in  our  argument,  to  the  phenomena 
of  nature  to  ask  if  they  must  be  regarded  as  conforming  to 
just  such  a  concept  of  finite  reality,  since,  as  a  fact,  this  is 
our  only  possible  concept  of  what  a  real  being  is.  Now  a 
phenomenon  of  nature,  on  the  face  of  it,  is  solely  something 
suggested  to  us  by  the  agreement  between  the  series  of  ex- 
periences present  in  various  men.  And  no  purely  physical 
experience  can  possibly  prove  that  nature  has  other  reality 
than  this,  viz.,  reality  as  a  series  of  parallel  trains  of  ex- 
perience in  various  people.  So  far  we  had  not  to  interpret 
nature,  but  only  to  wonder  why  nature  gets  taken  to  be 
real  at  all,  apart  from  these  parallel  series  of  experiences. 
Then  it  was  that  there  came  to  our  aid  the  argument  from 
continuity.  Certain  of  the  phenomena  of  nature  do  stand 
for  real  inner  experience,  viz.,  the  expressive  movements  of 
men.  It  is  impossible  to  separate  these  latter  phenomena, 
however,  from  the  rest  of  the  natural  world,  whose  phe- 
nomenal unity  the  doctrine  of  Evolution  is  now  daily  mak- 
ing more  manifest.  Hence — so  we  reasoned— the  rest  of 
phenomena]  nature  must  be  regarded  as  standing  for  systems 
of  finite  experience,  whose  inner  unity  has  to  be  defined  in 
the  way  tliat  human  experience  illustrates.  And  it  is  thus, 
not  by  analogy,  but  by  the  very  process  whereby  nature 
comes  to  be  defined  as  real  at  all,  that  natural  facts  get 
conceived  as  like  other  finite  experience.  Of  the  relation 


232  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

of  this  "  other  experience  than  ours  "  in  the  cosmos,  to  our 
human  type  of  experience  we  can  then  at  once  say,  that,  in 
the  process  of  evolution,  our  human  experience  has  become 
differentiated,  by  long  and  continuous  processes,  from  the 
whole,  so  that  relatively  continuous  intermediate  stages  now 
probably  link  us  to  the  rest  of  the  cosmical  inner  life.  Of 
"unconscious"  experience  in  nature  we  have  no  right  to 
speak,  precisely  because  consciousness  means  the  very  form 
and  fashion  of  the  being  of  experience  itself,  as  we  know  it. 
Of  transformations  of  conscious  experience,  with  a  preserva- 
tion of  continuity  through  the  whole  process,  our  own 
inner  life  gives  us  numerous  examples. 

Meanwhile,  let  us  lay  aside,  once  for  all,  the  petty  human 
Philistinism  that  talks  of  the  evolution  of  humanity  out  of 
so-called  "dead  nature,"  as  if  it  were  necessarily  a  vast 
progress  from  "  lower  "  to  "  higher,"  or  from  the  meaning- 
less to  the  world  full  of  meaning.  What  value  human 
life  may  get  we  in  a  measure  know.  But  we  certainly 
do  not  know  that  the  nature-experience  whose  inner  sense 
is  not  now  communicated  to  us  is  in  the  least  lower  or  less 
full  of  meaning.  Our  human  evolution  is,  as  it  were, 
simply  the  differentiation  of  one  nature-dialect,  whereby 
a  group  of  finite  beings  now  communicate  together.  We 
have  no  right  to  call  the  other  tongues  with  which  nature 
speaks,  barbarous,  because,  in  our  evolutionary  isolation 
from  the  rest  of  nature,  we  have  forgotten  what  they  mean. 

VIII. 

A  few  concluding  considerations  seem  to  be  still  in  place 
in  view  of  the  most  cogent  positive  objection  that  is  likely 
to  be  urged  against  the  foregoing  interpretation  of  nature. 
The  hypothesis  advanced  in  the  foregoing  transcends  our 
direct  as  well  as  our  scientifically  mediated  experience  of 
nature,  just  in  so  far  as  our  view  supposes  that  the  nature- 
phenomena  are  hints  of  the  existence  of  a  finite  experience 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  233 

continuous  with  ours,  but  such  that  its  extra-human  contents 
are  not  communicated  to  us.  And  this  transcendence  of 
our  human  experience  is  indeed  a  perfectly  obvious  objec- 
tion to  my  notion.  Yet  the  objection  is  so  far  only  negative. 
In  admitting,  as  I  do,  all  that  such  an  objection  can  urge 
so  far  as  regards  the  fact  that  our  hypothesis  transcends 
the  limits  of  present  human  verification,  I  still  answer  that 
this  objection  is  precisely  as  cogent  against  every  theory 
which  attributes  any  sort  of  genuine  inner  reality  to  nature, 
as  it  is  against  our  own  theory.  The  objection,  in  fact, 
contends  only  against  the  attribution  of  relatively  inde- 
pendent reality  to  nature,  just  as  such  attribution,  and  not 
against  our  special  view  as  such.  No  human  verification, 
made  as  it  is  under  social  conditions,  can  of  itself  do  more 
than  prove  (in  the  social  sense  of  the  word  "  proof ")  that 
various  human  experiences,  existent  in  different  men,  have 
certain  actual  agreements.  To  believe  that  nature  has  any 
reality  apart  from  these,  our  intercommunicable  parallel 
series  of  human  experiences  of  what  we  call  the  nature-phe- 
nomena, is,  therefore,  to  transcend  the  actual  data  of  the 
social  consciousness,  so  far  as  they  are  presented  to  us  mor- 
tals. The  present  objection,  then,  is  equally  valid  against 
all  cosmological  doctrines.  The  only  question  really  at 
issue,  however,  is :  What  reason  forces  us  to  transcend  the 
data  of  our  literal  social  consciousness  at  all  ?  Why  are  we 
led  to  assume  a  nature  outside  of  the  various  reports  that 
men  give  of  their  parallel  trains  of  describable  physical  ex- 
perience ?  To  this  question,  as  I  conceive,  the  only  fair 
answer  is  the  argument  from  continuity,  as  it  has  now  been 
stated.  But  the  argument  from  continuity  is  an  argument 
for  the  existence  of  finite  realities  whose  ultimate  type  the 
social  consciousness  in  general  predetermines  for  our  con- 
ception, wliilr  the  nature  of  their  sprrilic  relations  to  our 
experience  is  such  as  to  preclude  our  filling  out  this  gem-mi 
conception  of  "  other  experiences  than  ours"  with  any  par- 


234  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

ticular  contents  such  as  we  attribute  to  the  communicative 
minds  of  our  fellows.  My  argument,  then,  is  not  for  one 
concept  of  the  reality  of  the  facts  of  nature  as  against  con- 
trasting, and  equally  possible,  concepts  of  the  reality  of 
beings  other  than  ourselves.  My  argument  is,  that,  from 
the  nature  of  our  human  consciousness,  with  its  primal  con- 
trast of  inner  Ego  and  social  non-Ego,  we  can  have  just  one 
general  concept  of  a  finite  non-Ego,  viz.,  the  concept  of 
"  other  experience  than  our  own."  The  only  real  question, 
then,  is :  Shall  we  attribute  this  concept,  in  its  most  gener- 
alized form,  to  nature,  or  shall  we  not  ?  There  is  no  answer 
to  this  question  except  the  one  derived  from  our  foregoing 
argument  from  continuity.  That  to  attribute  any  reality 
whatever  to  nature  is  to  "  transcend  our  own  experience,"  in 
the  human  and  socially  concrete  sense  of  the  word  "  experi- 
ence," ought  to  be  especially  remembered  by  those  who, 
while  glibly  attributing  to  nature  a  reality  which  they  pro- 
fess to  regard  as  utterly  inscrutable,  are  still  accustomed  to 
insist  that  one  must  never  venture  to  transcend  human  ex- 
perience in  any  fashion. 

But  it  is  not  this  negative  argument  that  I  myself  re- 
gard as  the  most  cogent.  I  am,  as  I  have  just  said,  more 
interested  in  a  positive  objection  which  will  occur  to  many 
of  you. 

The  nature-experience,  so  our  hypothesis  supposes,  is,  in 
at  least  a  considerable  degree,  relatively  continuous  with 
ours.  That  is,  there  is  experience  in  nature  which  closely 
resembles  human  experience ;  there  is  other  experience 
which  less  resembles  ours,  but  which  need  not  be  lower ; 
there  is  conscious  experience  still  more  remote  from  ours ; 
and  so  on.  All  this  experience  hints  to  us  its  presence,  but 
only  in  case  of  our  human  fellows  communicates  its  inner 
meaning  to  us.  But  one  may  now  answer :  "  It  is  true  that 
the  phenomena  of  our  bodies  are,  physically  speaking,  con- 
tinuous with  the  phenomena  of  physical  nature  in  general. 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  235 

It  is  not  true,  so  soon  as  we  leave  man,  that  we  get  any 
direct  signs  of  the  existence  of  an  inner  life,  or  nature-ex- 
perience, at  all  corresponding,  in  its  inner  resemblance  to, 
our  own,  to  the  physical  continuity  of  its  phenomenal  pro- 
cesses with  our  own  expressive  physical  life.  The  higher 
animals  manifest  their  inner  experience,  apparently  similar 
to  ours,  by  expressive  activities  which  resemble  ours,  but 
which  certainly  do  not  stand  in  any  close  physical  conti- 
nuity with  ours.  Our  own  organic  processes,  on  the  other 
hand,  stand  in  very  close  relations  of  physical  continuity 
with  our  most  intelligent  conscious  and  voluntary  deeds. 
Yet  if  there  is  any  inner  experience  connected  with  those 
of  our  organic  activities  which  have  no  conscious  equiva- 
lents in  our  own  inner  life,  it  is  hard  to  show  any  sufficient 
body  of  evidence  to  bring  this  '  subliminal '  experience  into 
any  relatively  continuous  inner  relations  with  our  own, 
despite  the  numerous,  and  decidedly  interesting,  recent 
efforts  which  have  been  made  to  connect  our  individual 
consciousness,  by  empirical  links,  with  some  such  'sub- 
liminal '  processes."  What  my  theory  seems  to  lack,  then, 
is  a  definition  of  any  way  in  which  our  human  conscious- 
ness can  be  in  relations  of  inner  continuity  with  a  world  of 
experience  which,  although  thus  actually  in  close  continuity 
with  ours,  gives  signs  of  its  presence  only  through  physical 
phenomena  whose  inner  meaning,  even  in  case  of  our  own 
organic  processes,  quickly  escapes  any  interpretation  in 
terms  now  intelligible  to  our  socially  limited  minds.  An 
objector  may  well  urge  that  this  is  a  positive  fault  of  the 
theory.  Our  theory,  he  may  say,  need  not  undertake  to 
tell  precisely  what  the  supposed  nature-experience  con- 
tains. But  it  ought  to  show  how  physical  processes  con- 
tinuous with  those  of  whose  inner  meaning  we  are  conscious, 
may  involve,  as  their  own  inner  aspect,  types  of  experience 
more  or  less  continuously  related  to  our  own,  and  yet  now 
quite  inaccessible  to  us. 


236  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

As  a  fact,  there  is  a  very  obvious  way  of  hypothetically 
accounting  for  this  presence  and  inaccessibility  of  types  of 
experience  closely  related  to  ours,  whose  presence  is  hinted 
to  us  by  physical  processes  such  that  we  now  wholly  fail  to 
interpret  their  inner  meaning.  This  supplementary  hy- 
pothesis is  suggested  by  one  of  the  most  interesting  and 
best  known  principles  governing  the  correlation  of  mental 
processes  and  their  phenomenal  accompaniments. 

Mental  processes,  in  human  beings,  are  correlated  to 
physical  processes  whose  phenomenal  or  externally  observ- 
able basis  is  known  to  be  the  functions  of  nervous  systems. 
Now  the  best  known  principle  governing  the  physical  for- 
tune.s  of  any  nervous  system  is  the  principle  of  Habit.  This 
is  the  rule  that  a  nervous  system  tends  to  repeat  its  former 
functions,  when  once  these  have  become  set  through  series 
of  repeated  stimulations.  Whatever  function  has  frequent- 
ly been  accomplished  under  the  direction  of  nervous  cen- 
ters, tends  to  be  the  more  readily  accomplished  again.  This 
principle  tends,  of  course,  to  the  production  of  stability  and 
uniformity  of  conduct  in  us  all.  And  the  analogy  between 
the  results  of  this  special  tendency  to  the  formation  of  nerv- 
ous Habits,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  existence  of  the  ob- 
servable processes  of  Natural  Law  in  general,  on  the  other 
hand,  has  often  been  noted.  The  phenomenally  observable 
conduct  of  a  being  with  a  nervous  system  is  always,  as  a 
fact,  and  in  proportion  to  the  elevation  of  this  being  in  the 
scale  of  life,  a  very  irregular  sort  of  conduct.  Yet  it  tends 
towards  regularity,  because  of  the  principle  of  Habit.  Now, 
however,  the  regularity  of  outwardly  observable  conduct 
towards  which,  as  towards  an  asymptote,  the  conduct  of  a 
being  with  a  nervous  system  tends,  is  a  sort  of  regularity 
which  physical  nature,  especially  in  the  inorganic  world, 
continually  shows  us,  only  in  a  highly  perfected  form,  in 
those  extremely  regular  processes  which  we  define,  not,  to 
be  sure,  as  the  ideally  ultimate  laws  of  the  universe,  but  as 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  237 

the  observable  routine  of  phenomenal  nature  (such  routine 
as  is  exemplified  by  the  tides,  the  seasons,  etc.).  That  na- 
ture's observable  Laws  might  even  be  interpreted,  from  an 
evolutionary  point  of  view,  as  nature's  gradually  acquired 
Habits,  originating  in  a  primal  condition  of  a  relatively 
capricious  irregularity,  is  a  conception  to  which  several  re- 
cent writers,  notably  Mr.  Cope,  and,  with  great  philosophical 
ingenuity,  Mr.  Charles  Peirce,  have  given  considerable 
elaboration.  I  do  not  myself  accept  this  notion  that  the 
laws  of  phenomenal  nature,  where  they  are  genuinely  ob- 
jective laws,  and  not  relatively  superficial  human  generali- 
zations, are  the  evolutionary  product  of  any  such  cosmical 
process  of  acquiring  habits,  as  Mr.  Peirce  has  so  ingeniously 
supposed  in  his  hypothesis  of  "Tychism."  But  I  mention 
the  analogy  between  these  regularities  of  physical  phenome- 
na which  are  called  the  observable  laws  of  nature,  and  the 
gradually  acquired  regularities  of  conduct  which  slowly  ap- 
pear in  the  lives  of  beings  with  nervous  systems,  in  order  to 
introduce  another  consideration,  of  equal  importance  for 
the  definition  of  the  place  of  conscious  experience  in  the 
cosmical  order. 

If  it  is  the  rule  that  our  nervous  systems  tend  to  form 
habits,  and  that  habits  mean  uniformities  of  phenomenal 
behavior,  it  is  equally  true  that  our  human  consciousness 
tends  to  grow  faint  just  in  proportion  as  our  habits  become 
relatively  invariable.  Our  human  and  conscious  experience 
is  the  inner  accompaniment  of  what  appears,  when  viewed 
from  without,  as  an  irregularity  of  phenomenally  observ- 
able conduct  Or,  in  other  words,  our  conscious  life  is  the 
inner  aspect  of  a  physical  process  of  what  is  called  our  ad- 
justment to  our  environment  This  adjustment  tends  to  be- 
come, in  proportion  to  the  perfection  of  our  habits,  a  matter 
of  predictable  routine.  But  whenever  this  routine  becomes 
relatively  perfect,  our  consciousness  grows  fainter,  and  in 
the  extreme  case  of  an  almost  entirely  invariable  physical 


238  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

routine,  our  consciousness  ceases,  while  the  perfected  nerv- 
ous habit  remains,  for  human  experience,  only  as  an  exter- 
nally observable  phenomenal  process  of  a  physical  nature. 
A  young  man  consciously  and  proudly  twirls  his  mous- 
tache. The  acquisition  of  this  new  mode  of  conduct  con- 
stitutes a  novel  adjustment,  and  so  involves  change  of 
routine  behavior.  This  change  is  accompanied,  at  first,  by 
a  decided  sense  of  personal  importance.  In  time  the  habit 
may  become  set,  so  that  it  gets  an  entirely  reflex  perfection, 
and  then,  as  in  a  well-known  reported  case,  a  man  struck 
senseless  by  a  street-accident,  and  suffering  from  severe 
cerebral  injury,  is  seen,  as  he  is  carried  to  the  hospital,  auto- 
matically twirling  his  moustache,  from  time  to  time,  in 
what,  from  our  human  point  of  view,  appears  as  absolute 
unconsciousness,  since  we  are  unable,  either  then  or  later,  to 
get  into  any  sort  of  communication  with  the  conscious 
experience,  if  such  there  be,  that  forms  an  inner  aspect  of 
this  nervous  habit.  Just  so,  if  one's  nervous  habits  were  so 
well  formed,  and  if  one's  environment  were  so  changeless, 
that  one's  whole  physical  life  were  a  settled  series  of  rhyth- 
mically performed  activities,  recurring  with  the  regularity 
of  breathing,  or  of  the  tides,  the  empirical  evidence  is  that 
one  would  have  no  conscious  life  of  the  sort  now  communi- 
cated to  us  by  our  social  fellows.  Consciousness,  as  we 
know  it  in  man,  and  interpret  its  presence  in  animals,  is  an 
incident  of  an  interrupted  adjustment  to  our  environment — 
an  interrupted  adjustment  which,  seen  from  without,  ex- 
presses itself  in  conduct  that  involves  alteration  of  old 
habits  to  meet  new  conditions.  As  Romanes  well  asserted, 
the  signs  of  mind,  in  any  animal,  are  best  to  be  defined  as 
just  such  relative  novelties  of  conduct  in  the  presence  of 
new  situations.  Not  routine,  then,  as  such,  but  irregu- 
larity, gives  the  physically  interpretable  sign  of  mind. 
Habit  is  always  present,  in  the  actions  of  the  obviously 
conscious  being;  but,  whenever  he  shows  interpretable 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AXD  NATURE.  239 

signs  of  consciousness,  habit  is  always  undergoing  alter- 
ation. 

If  one  considers  these  various  groups  of  facts  together, 
one  gets,  at  first,  an  impression  of  the  place  of  conscious- 
ness in  nature  which  seems  quite  unfavorable  to  our  hypoth- 
esis. Inorganic  nature  seems  to  be,  as  we  view  it,  a  realm 
where  physical  routine  is,  at  present,  obviously  much  more 
nearly  verifiable,  in  an  exact  degree,  than  is  the  case  with 
organic  nature.  In  the  inorganic  world,  then,  what  might 
be  called,  by  analogy,  the  habitual  process  of  the  cosmos, 
the  observable  routine  of  physical  phenomena,  seems  to  be 
especially  fixed,  and  open  in  its  fixity  to  our  human  obser- 
vation. In  the  organic  world,  whether  or  no  the  same  ulti- 
mate natural  laws  would,  if  we  knew  the  whole  truth, 
ideally  explain  the  facts,  it  is  obvious  that,  at  present,  we 
see  less  regularity — less  perfected  observable  habits,  so  far  as 
our  present  imperfect  experience  goes.  But,  just  where  we 
now  see  least  regularity,  there  we  get  the  only  signs  of 
finite  minds  that  we  can  at  present  definitely  interpret. 
The  ordinary  generalization  from  this  whole  situation  is, 
that,  phenomenal  irregularity  being  characteristic  of  the 
physical  processes  which  indicate  mind,  phenomenal  regu- 
larity must,  by  contrast,  indicate  the  presence  of  the  Uncon- 
scious— whatever  that  may  mean. 

But  now  this  generalization  is  open  to  many  objections. 
The  unconscious,  as  such,  is,  as  a  fact,  a  mere  Ding-an-aich, 
a  meaningless  abstraction.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  if  one 
leaves  out  the  ultimate  presupposition  that  all  of  nature's 
processes,  organic  and  inorganic,  are,  in  some  fashion  still 
unknown  to  us,  absolutely  and  equally  uniform — if  one,  I 
say,  leaves  out  this  ultimate  metaphysical  presupposition, 
which  I  intend  to  examine  in  another  place,  and  which 
does  not  here  concern  us — and  if  one  confines  one's  self 
simply  to  the  phenomenal,  and  the  to  empirical  differences 
between  organic  and  inorganic  nature,  then  one  must  say 
17 


240  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

that  the  observable  or  the  scientifically  computable  and 
verifiable  routine  of  rhythmic  repetition  in  inorganic  na- 
ture is  nowhere  concretely  known  to  us  as  phenomenally 
invariable.  The  rhythm  of  the  tides,  at  any  given  point,  or 
over  the  surface  of  the  globe  at  large,  is  invariable  only  if 
you  do  not  take  account  of  long  periods  of  time.  The  same 
holds  true  of  the  regularity  of  the  earth's  revolution  on  its 
axis,  and  of  the  change  of  the  seasons.  The  planetary  orbits 
undergo  secular  variations,  which  are,  within  certain  long 
periods,  relatively  rhythmic ;  but  if  you  take  a  period 
sufficiently  long,  these  variations  are  doubtless  no  longer 
rhythmic. 

As  a  fact,  then,  the  permanence  of  the  phenomenally 
obvious  "  habits  "  of  inorganic  nature  is  only  relative.  It 
is  true  that,  if  you  pass  from  such  observably  regular 
rhythms,  whose  actual  degree  of  regularity  is  itself  only  a 
varying  function  of  the  time  taken  into  account,  and  if  you 
consider  the  ultimate  and  ideal  "laws  of  nature,"  upon 
which  all  such  approximate  regularities  are  conceived  to  be 
founded,  you  do,  indeed,  reach  systems  of  "  force  functions  " 
conceived  as  absolutely  independent  of  time.  But  thus  to 
pass  to  the  ultimate  is  to  substitute  a  metaphysical  concep- 
tion of  rigid  causation  for  the  empirically  observed  uni- 
formities. And  this  conception  which  we  here  omit  from 
consideration,  must  apply,  if  true  at  all,  to  organic  nature 
quite  as  much  as  to  inorganic  nature.  If,  however,  you 
cling  to  the  observable  "  habits  "  of  nature,  then  the  differ- 
ence between  the  organic  and  the  inorganic  is  one  only  of 
the  length  of  time  required  to  make  a  given  alteration  of 
habitual  sequence  in  the  phenomena  manifest.  Our  solar 
system  is  "  adapting  "  itself  to  an  environment  of  seemingly 
limitless  extent  by  the  well-known  dissipation  of  its  ener- 
gies. This  adaptation  involves,  in  varied  ways,  slow  pro- 
cesses of  phenomenal  change  which  must,  in  the  end,  alter 
every  known  phenomenal  rhythm  of  regularly  repeated  na- 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  241 

ture-habits.  When  read  backwards,  the  same  tendencies 
indicate  that  the  present  phenomenal  order  must  have  been 
reached  by  processes  whose  phenomenal  manifestations 
would  have  been,  in  past  times,  enormously  different  in 
their  routine  from  any  process  now  manifest.  Even  if  ulti- 
mate laws  exist,  then,  and  involve  absolutely  ideal  regu- 
larities, which  hold  for  all  phenomena,  organic  and  inor- 
ganic, it  still  follows  that  the  observable  and  relatively 
rhythmic  regularities  of  inorganic  nature  must  be  as  truly 
cases  of  constantly  altered  "  habits,"  continually  adjusted 
to  numerous  conditions  in  the  environment,  as  are  the 
seemingly  so  irregular  expressive  acts  of  our  socially  ex- 
pressive fellows.  The  difference  lies  in  the  enormously 
different  times  required  to  make  manifest  the  alterations  of 
phenomenal  conduct  in  question.  A  business  man  in  a 
great  commercial  crisis,  or  a  great  general,  directing  his  army 
during  a  battle,  adjusts  his  regular  routine  to  the  new  condi- 
tions by  changes  of  conduct  that  occur  within  very  brief 
periods.  A  planet  or  a  solar  system  alters  the  routine  of  its 
rhythmic  processes  in  ways  that  it  may  take  millions  of 
years  to  make  manifest.  But  in  both  cases  the  essentials  of 
adjustment  are  present,  viz.,  variations  in  the  rhythm  of 
characteristic  movements  occurring  in  correspondence  to 
changing  situations. 

If,  thus  viewed,  the  difference  between  the  larger  phenom- 
enal alterations  of  inorganic  and  of  organic  nature  appears 
mainly  as  a  matter  of  the  time-span  involved  in  each  alter- 
ation, it  remains  to  consider  a  little  more  carefully  the  re- 
lation which  we  all  experience  between  the  inner  processes 
of  our  conscious  experience  and  those  expressive  alterations 
of  habit  to  suit  environment  which  accompany  our  con- 
scious life. 

What  appears  to  our  fellows  from  without  as  habit 
altered  to  meet  circumstance,  appears  from  within,  in  tin- 
experience  of  each  of  us,  as  the  apperception  of  relatively 


242  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

new  elements  of  experience  by  virtue  of  their  relations  of 
similarity  and  contrast  to  relatively  old  or  familiar  or  estab- 
lished masses  of  inner  states.  The  old,  the  familiar,  the 
established  in  consciousness  we  have  always  with  us  when- 
ever we  experience.  It  is  the  element  of  our  consciousness 
which  corresponds,  at  any  moment,  to  the  established 
nervous  habits  just  then  aroused — to  the  routine  of  our 
lives  so  far  as  it  is  just  then  repeated.  The  novel,  the  puz- 
zling, the  intruding  element  in  our  consciousness  corre- 
sponds to  the  alteration  which  the  environment  is  at  the 
moment  producing  in  our  established  physical  routine  as  at 
that  moment  represented.  We  breathe  regularly,  and  are 
not  conscious  of  the  fact.  But  an  alteration  in  breathing, 
produced  by  a  novel  physical  situation,  gets  represented  in 
consciousness  as  a  shock  of  surprise.  Thus  the  alteration 
of  our  physical  routine,  at  any  moment,  corresponds  to  the 
degree  of  our  conscious  experience.  The  greater  the  masses 
and  the  contrast  of  the  opposing  new  and  old  elements,  the 
sharper  is  our  consciousness,  and,  externally  viewed,  the 
more  marked  is  our  adjustment.  If  either  mass  of  mental 
contents  tends  utterly  to  overbalance  the  other,  conscious- 
ness becomes  dim.  The  effacement  of  either  element 
means  the  temporary  or  final  cessation  of  our  whole 
stream  of  conscious  experience.  In  sleep  one's  physical 
routine  is  nearly  regular,  and  one's  conscious  experience 
vanishes. 

Meanwhile,  our  human  experience  is  subject  to  another 
and  very  important  limitation,  which  we  may  call  The 
Limitation  of  our  Apperceptive  Span.  This  limitation,  so 
far  as  we  can  see,  is  something  purely  arbitrary — a  mere 
fact,  which  we  have  to  accept  like  the  rest  of  our  finite 
situation.  The  existence  of  all  such  arbitrary  limitations 
is,  like  the  existence  in  general  of  any  form  of  finitude,  a 
proper  problem  for  a  general  metaphysical  inquiry.  But 
a  merely  cosmological  study  has  to  be  content,  in  such  cases, 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  243 

with  accepting  the  arbitrary  fact  as  such.  What  is  meant, 
however,  by  this  apperceptive  span  is  the  fact  that  what  we 
call  a  present  moment  in  our  consciousness  always  has  a 
brief  but  still  by  no  means  an  infinitesimal  length,  within 
which  the  "  pulse "  of  change,  which  that  moment  apper- 
ceives,  must  fall.  Changes  of  mental  content  which  occur 
either  too  swiftly  or  too  slowly  to  fall  within  the  span  of  the 
least  or  of  the  greatest  time-interval  which  our  human 
apperception  follows  escape  us  altogether,  or  else,  like  the 
slower  changes  occurring  in  nature,  are  only  indirectly  to  be 
noticed  by  us.  Since  the  momentary  change  in  the  contents 
of  our  consciousness  corresponds,  in  a  general  way,  to  the 
externally  observable  alteration  of  our  physical  routine  to 
meet  new  conditions,  one  may  say,  on  the  whole,  that  where 
our  established  habits  are  changed  too  slowly  or  too  quickly, 
the  change  is  inadequately  represented,  or  is  not  represented 
at  all,  in  our  individual  experience. 

Yet  a  change  in  our  routine  which  is  so  slow  as  to 
escape  our  own  apperceptive  span,  is  still  a  fact  in  the  phe- 
nomenal world,  a  fact  capable  of  being  recorded  and  veri- 
fied. Why  may  not  just  such  facts  be  represented  by  ex- 
perience ichich  accompanies  our  own,  and  which  is  just 
as  real  as  ours,  but  which  is  characterized  by  another 
apperceptive  span  I  This  supplementary  hypothesis  is 
worthy  of  special  consideration. 

No  element  or  character  of  our  human  experience,  in 
fact,  appears  more  arbitrary  than  does  the  apperceptive  span 
when  we  submit  its  phenomena  to  experimental  tests.  That 
the  whole  of  the  contents  of  a  finite  series  of  temporal  in- 
stants should,  despite  the  fact  of  this  temporal  succession, 
form  one  moment  of  our  consciousness — that,  for  instance' 
a  rhythmic  phrase,  made  up  of  a  number  of  successive 
beats,  should  constitute  one  presented  whole,  and  stand 
before  our  consciousness  as  such,  is  in  itself  a  remarkable 
fact  That,  when  once  this  is  the  case,  the  length  of  such 


STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

a  single  and  presentable  rhythmic  phrase  or  other  pre- 
sentable conscious  moment  should  be  as  limited  as  it  is,  is 
an  entirely  arbitrary  characteristic  of  our  special  type  of 
human  experience.  When  once  we  recognize  this  aspect  of 
our  conscious  life,  we  can  conceptually  vary  indefinitely 
this  temporal  span  of  consciousness,  and  can  so  form  the 
notion  of  other  possible  experience  than  ours  whose  essence, 
like  that  of  our  own,  should  consist  in  the  contrast  between 
relatively  familiar  or  changeless  contents  and  relatively 
new  contents,  but  whose  apperceptive  span  should  differ 
from  our  own  in  such  wise  that  for  such  experience  a 
"  present  moment "  might  be,  when  temporally  regarded,  as 
much  longer  or  as  much  shorter  than  ours  as  one  pleases. 
A  millionth  of  a  second  might  constitute  the  span  of  one 
such  conceivable  type  of  experience.  In  that  case  changes 
of  content  far  too  subtle  to  mean  anything  to  us  would  be 
matters  of  immediate  fact  to  the  experience  in  question. 
A  minute,  an  hour,  a  year,  a  century,  a  world-cycle  might 
form  the  apperceptive  span  of  some  other  possible  type  of 
consciousness.  In  that  case  inner  changes  of  content 
which  utterly  transcend  our  direct  apperception  might  be 
matters  of  presentation  to  such  another  type  of  experience. 

Now,  however,  imagine  a  system  of  finite  series  of  experi- 
ences, agreeing,  in  a  great  measure,  in  their  contents,  but 
differing  in  some  graded  fashion,  in  their  apperceptive  span. 
Let  each  of  these  series  be  characterized  by  the  fact  that 
everywhere  there  were  present,  in  the  inner  world  of  each 
experience,  changing  groups  of  contents  A,  B,  C,  D,  the  rate 
of  change,  however,  differing  in  all  the  series  alike  for  each 
group  of  contents,  so  that  in  every  one  of  the  series  in  ques- 
tion the  group  A  changed  at  some  rapid  rate  r,  the  group 
B  at  some  slower  rate  r',  the  group  C  at  a  still  slower  rate  r", 
and  so  on.  Now  suppose  it  arbitrarily  agreed  that  if,  for 
any  one  of  these  series,  a  given  change  of  contents  A  took 
place  within  the  span  of  one  of  the  presented  moments  of 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  245 

that  series,  then  this  degree  of  change  should  mean  a  clear 
consciousness  of  the  nature  of  just  that  change  from  older 
to  newer  conditions,  whereas,  in  so  far  as  contents  changed 
either  much  less  or  much  more  than  A  during  such  a  pre- 
sented moment,  then  these  contents  and  their  changes  should 
be  relatively  obscure  for  the  experience  in  question,  forming 
only  the  background  upon  which  the  clearly  apperceived 
changes  stood  out  It  would  then  become  possible,  in  one 
of  these  series  of  experiences  (whose  apperceptive  span  was 
so  related  to  the  rate  r  that  the  required  change  A  took  place 
in  the  group  A  during  one  presentable  moment  of  this  series), 
that  the  changes  of  A  should  stand  out  clearly,  as  definite 
facts,  on  a  dimly  apperceived  background  of  the  contents 
B,  C,  and  D.  In  a  second  series,  whose  contents  we  may 
suppose  the  same  as  those  of  the  first,  but  whose  apper- 
ceptive span  has  relation  to  the  rate  r1,  the  changes  of  A 
would  become  obscure,  while  the  changes  of  B  were  clear, 
and  so  on.  Thus  what  for  one  of  these  series  of  experiences 
was  the  clearly  apperceived  relation  of  new  and  old,  would 
be,  in  another  series,  represented  only  by  baffiingly  swift 
and  confused  trcmulousness  of  contents,  or  by  apparently 
changeless  contents.  What  one  experience  might  indirect- 
ly come  to  regard  as  a  conceivable  secular  variation  of 
the  content  which,  so  far  as  its  own  direct  apperception 
went,  is  found  unalterable,  another  experience,  substantial- 
ly agreeing  with  the  first  in  all  but  the  apperceptive  span, 
would  have  presented  to  itself  as  definitely  changing  ma- 
terial. What  one  experience,  therefore,  viewed  as  seem- 
ingly unalterable,  and  consequently  unmeaning  routine, 
the  other  would  apperceive  as  significant  and  momentary 
change. 

Let  one  now  further  suppose,  however,  that  through  the 
addition  of  still  other  elements  to  each  of  these  series  of 
experiences,  the  presence  of  one  series  became  communi- 
cated to  the  others  by  phenomenally  observable  manifes- 


246  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

tations.  Then  surely  one  can  conceive  each  series  of  ex- 
periences as  aware,  more  or  less  indirectly,  of  the  presence, 
and  even  of  the  inner  reality  of  its  neighbors.  But  of  the 
meaning  of  this  other  life  each  series  could  form  a  director 
sort  of  appreciation  only  in  so  far  as  the  apperceptive  span 
of  one  series  agreed  with  that  of  another.  Socially  defi- 
nite communication  could  occur  only  between  types  of  ex- 
perience of  substantially  the  same  apperceptive  span.  Fi- 
nally, if  one  supposes  the  phenomenally  indicated  contents 
of  the  various  series  to  involve  many  unlikenesses,  as  well 
as  many  agreements  in  the  different  series  themselves,  one 
approaches  the  conception  of  a  system  of  series  of  experi- 
ences whereof  any  one  series  might  manifest  its  presence 
to  its  neighbors,  while  the  inner  life  and  meaning  of  one 
series  could  be  concretely  realized  by  another  only  in  so  far 
as,  along  with  much  agreement  in  their  contents,  there  was 
also  close  agreement  in  apperceptive  span.  But  if  a  series 
of  slowly  changing  contents,  and  of  vast  apperceptive  span, 
manifested  its  presence  to  a  series  of  swiftly  changing  con- 
tents, and  of  brief  apperceptive  span,  then  the  only  repre- 
sentative of  the  first  series  in  the  life  of  the  second  would 
be  a  group  of  changeless,  or  of  rhythmically  repeated  phe- 
nomena, which  would  seem  to  manifest  no  intelligible  inner 
life  as  such,  but  only  those  habits  which  form,  not  the  whole, 
but  a  single  aspect  of  the  phenomenal  life  of  any  being 
whose  inner  experience  his  neighbor  can  interpret — only 
such  habits,  but  no  significant  variations  or  adjustments  of 
habits. 

If  one  again  reviews,  in  the  light  of  these  considerations, 
the  facts  before  considered,  one  finds  a  situation  which  our 
single  supplementary  hypothesis  now  enables  us  in  general  to 
understand.  This  hypothesis  is  that  the  apperceptive  span 
of  finite  experience  is  a  quantity  relatively  fixed  for  our 
social  fellows,  but  very  vastly  variable  in  the  realm  of  cos- 
mical  experience  in  general.  The  "  other  experience  than 


CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  NATURE.  247 

ours,"  of  which  we  suppose  the  inner  life  of  nature  to  con- 
sist, is  everywhere  an  experience  of  new  contents  viewed  on 
the  background  of  old  contents,  of  changes  arising  on  a 
basis  of  identity,  of  novelty  contrasted  with  familiarity.  In 
order  that  such  streams  of  gradual  change  should  be  in- 
wardly appreciable,  the  change  must  everywhere  be  pres- 
ent, to  a  finite  degree,  within  one  presented  moment  of  the 
series  of  experiences  to  which,  in  each  case  of  conscious  ex- 
perience, this  appreciation  belongs.  But  a  present  moment 
does  not  mean  a  mathematical  instant  It  means,  in  any 
type  of  conscious  experience,  a  period  of  time  equal  to  the 
apperceptive  span,  and  this  period,  in  case  of  any  given 
finite  experience,  might  as  well  be  a  world-cycle  as  a  sec- 
ond. Only,  in  case  a  type  of  changing  experience  whose 
apperceptive  span  is  a  world-cycle,  hints  its  contents  to  a 
sort  of  experience  whose  apperceptive  span  is  brief,  like 
ours,  then  the  phenomenal  manifestation  in  question  may, 
to  any  extent,  take  the  form  of  an  apparently  final  uni- 
formity of  contents,  such  as  we  seem  to  observe  in  the  secu- 
lar uniformities  of  physical  nature.  But,  where  uniformity 
alone  is  suggested,  the  element  of  change  of  contents,  upon 
which  every  appreciation  of  any  inner  experience  depends, 
is  absent.  One  then  seems  to  be  apperceiving  only  fixed 
laws,  absolute  routine,  settled  habits  of  nature,  and  can  de- 
tect no  inner  meanings,  unless  by  the  aid  of  the  most  fanci- 
ful analogies.  Between  experience  of  this  august  span 
and  our  human  experience  a  relatively  continuous  series  of 
types  of  experience  may  lie,  whose  presence  gets  manifested 
to  us  in  processes  of  increasing  phenomenal  irregularity, 
such  as  those  of  organic  nature.  Nearest  to  our  own  type 
of  human  experience  would  doubtless  lie  masses  of  "  sub- 
liminal" experience  related  to  those  changing  habits  of 
our  own  organisms  which  escape  our  apperceptive  span. 
Below  our  own  brief  span  there  may  lie  types  of  experience 
of  still  briefer  span,  whose  phenomenal  manifestations 


24:8  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

have,  like  the  hypothetical  collisions  of  the  molecules  of  a 
gas,  an  enormous  irregularity,  such  as  only  the  law  of  aver- 
ages, as  revealed  by  the  doctrine  of  chances,  enables  us  to 
conceive  as  resulting,  by  virtue  of  the  vast  numbers  of  facts 
that  are  concerned,  in  a  secondary  regularity  of  outward 
seeming  when  these  facts  are  grouped  in  great  masses. 

But  in  itself,  nature,  as  such,  would  be  neither  a  world 
of  fixed  habits  or  yet  a  world  of  mere  novelties,  but  rather 
a  world  of  experience  with  permanence  everywhere  set  off 
by  change.  For  the  rest,  the  problem  which  has  been 
raised  by  Mr.  Charles  Peirce  (to  whose  brilliant  cosmo- 
logical  essays  the  foregoing  discussion,  despite  the  indi- 
cated disagreements,  obviously  owes  very  much) — the  prob- 
lem whether  in  nature  there  is  any  objective  "chance," 
and  whether  all  natural  law  is,  in  the  last  analysis,  a 
product  of  evolution,  has  been  in  the  foregoing,  deliber- 
ately ignored.  It  is  a  problem,  as  above  remarked,  whose 
discussion  belongs  elsewhere  than  in  this  context. 


IX. 
ORIGINALITY  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS* 

IT  takes  but  a  small  experience  of  men  and  of  literature 
to  bring  to  our  notice  the  fact  that  one  of  the  most  power- 
ful enemies  of  effective  originality,  in  conduct,  and  in  artis- 
tic production,  is  the  conscious  wish  and  intent  to  be  original. 
Yet  any  man  who  means  to  do  good  work  desires  to  be  origi- 
nal. Hence  there  arises,  for  every  such  man,  a  problem — 
a  problem  of  self -con  quest.  It  is  easy  to  be  commonplace. 
One  has  only  to  follow  the  crowd,  to  drift,  to  live  from  day 
to  day.  The  ambitious  man  rebels  at  this  destiny.  He 
wants  to  be  himself.  He  realizes  the  force  of  the  one 
great  command  that  the  moral  law  addresses  to  the  indi- 
vidual in  regard  to  the  individual's  own  self-cultivation. 
This  command  is :  "Be  unique,  as  your  Father  in  heaven 
is  unique."  All  other  moral  commands  tell  the  individual 
about  the  law  of  self-surrender.  Such  commands  run : 
Sacrifice  yourself — be  a  servant — find  your  office  and  fulfill 
its  tasks — be  loyal  to  your  ties — in  a  word,  give  up  your 
separate  life.  There  remains,  side  by  side  with  all  these 
precepts,  the  other,  the  equally  sacred  commandment :  Be 
unique.  That  is :  Render  your  service  as  nobody  else  can 
render  it ;  do  your  work  as  you  alone  can  do  it ;  fill  the 
place  that  nobody  else  can  fill.  There  is  no  inconsistency 
between  these  two  aspects  of  the  moral  law.  One  supple- 
ments the  other.  Some  unique  form  of  self-sacrifice  re- 


*  From  the  Harvard  Monthly,  June,  1897. 

M 


250  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

mains  the  individual's  inalienable  privilege.  Therein  alone 
can  he  fulfill  his  destiny.  Well,  all  this  the  ambitious  man 
feels.  And  to  feel  this  introduces  the  problem  of  every 
noble  youth :  How  shall  I  be  original  ?  Forthwith,  how- 
ever, the  problem  deepens.  To  wish  to  be  original  is,  as  we 
have  said,  to  come  face  to  face  with  one  of  the  principal 
foes  to  originality.  Conscious,  deliberate,  intentional  effort 
at  originality  is  likely  to  involve  one  of  two  things :  viz., 
either  waywardness  or  self-imitation.  Waywardness  is 
such  trivial  attempt  at  originality  as  depends  upon  follow- 
ing the  passing  mood  of  the  moment.  Self-imitation  is  the 
well-known  besetting  sin  of  anybody  who  has  once  observed 
himself  saying  or  doing  what  he  takes  to  be  an  uncom- 
monly clever  thing.  Teachers,  clergymen,  and  poets  once 
past  their  prime,  all  share  with  self-conscious  children  the 
temptation  to  repeat  their  old  successes  by  imitating  their 
own  once  novel,  pretty  deeds.  Thus,  in  these  two  ways, 
the  will  to  be  original  tends  to  defeat  itself.  One  must 
begin  one's  self-assertion,  even  in  this  its  most  sacred  under- 
taking, by  an  act  of  self-conquest.  And  meanwhile  there 
arises  a  certain  purely  theoretical  question,  namely :  Why 
this  strange  conflict  between  originality  and  conscious- 
ness ?  Why  is  the  best  human  originality  so  largely  an 
unconscious  product  ? 

To  this  very  natural  theoretical  question  the  present 
paper  suggests  some  answer.  The  answer,  so  far  as  it  goes, 
is  founded  upon  a  very  simple  analysis  of  our  human  type 
of  consciousness.  It  is  easy  to  indicate  that  the  narrow 
field  or  span  of  conscious  life  in  which  you  and  I  live  is 
not  large  enough  to  permit  the  source  and  essence  of  our 
best  and  most  individual  processes  to  become  directly  pres- 
ent to  us  at  all.  Hence  it  is  not  so  much  the  nature  of 
originality  as  the  accidental  limits  of  the  human  type 
of  consciousness  which  force  us  to  admit  that,  for  us 
men,  our  originality,  whatever  be  its  grade,  must  in  gen- 


ORIGINALITY  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS.  251 

eral  belong  to  the  unconscious  side  of  our  life.  On  the 
other  hand,  such  a  study  of  the  reason  why  human  con- 
sciousness and  originality  are  related  as  they  are,  may  help 
us  to  suggest,  in  a  measure,  how  to  treat  the  practical  prob- 
lem with  which  we  began,  and  how  to  show  the  way  towards 
that  self-conquest  upon  which  the  successful  effort  of  an 
individual  to  mould  himself  to  originality  must  depend. 

Our  conscious  mental  life  is,  as  everybody  knows,  usually 
classified  under  three  heads,  the  Intellect,  the  Feelings,  and 
the  Will.  And  one  may  raise  the  question  :  To  which  one, 
if  to  any  one,  of  these  three  aspects  of  our  mental  life,  is 
the  originality  of  any  given  individual — say  of  a  literary 
artist — to  be  attributed  ?  This  is  of  course  an  elementary 
problem  of  mental  analysis.  I  regard  it  as  of  essential 
importance  for  the  task  before  us. 

In  answer,  I  may  first  venture  to  point  out  one  very 
simple,  but  not  infrequent  popular  mistake  as  to  the  region 
of  a  man's  mind  in  which  we  may  most  naturally  look  for 
originality.  It  is  customary  for  popular  moralists  to  exhort 
a  man  in  a  tone  which  presupposes  that  anybody  can 
accomplish  essentially  original  acts  of  conscious  Will. 
The  will  is,  in  fact,  often  conceived  as  the  most  originative 
aspect  of  mental  life.  "  It  lies  with  you,"  one  says.  "  If 
you  will,  you  can  be — this  or  that — within  your  limits,  of 
course,  but  still  in  an  original  way."  It  is  thus  supposed 
to  be  especially  the  will  that,  in  the  course  of  my  life,  initi- 
ates new  fashions  of  conduct,  and  so  transforms  my  destiny 
by  virtue  of  its  own  spontaneity.  My  will  and  my  "  power 
of  initiative  "  are  often,  in  popular  speech,  identified.  This, 
one  may  suppose,  is  often  what  those  have  in  mind  who 
identify  genius  with  a  "  capacity  for  taking  pains."  Such 
may  mean,  by  this  expression,  that,  whereas  a  lazy  man 
cannot  invent  and  accomplish  great  and  original  things,  a 
painstaking  man,  by  persistently  exercising  his  power  of 
initiative,  reaches  results  which,  because  they  are  the  prod- 


052  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

uct  of  his  individual  will,  have  a  special  right  to  be  novel, 
and  so  to  embody  originality  of  some  higher  grade. 

But  it  is  a  serious  mistake  thus  directly  to  identify  volun- 
tary activity  with  origination.  Every  voluntary  act,  just  in 
so  far  as  it  is  voluntary,  must  for  that  very  reason  possess 
no  originality  whatever.  For  I  cannot  will  to  do  anything 
unless  I  first  know  what  I  am  to  do.  This,  however,  I  must 
have  learned  by  previous  experience  of  precisely  such  acts. 
And  this,  again,  implies  that  every  voluntary  act  is  essen- 
tially identical,  in  so  far  as  it  is  voluntary,  with  an  act  that 
I  have  already  performed  before.  Hence,  every  voluntary 
act  depends  upon  previous  acts  whose  origin,  in  the  first 
instance,  must  have  been  involuntary.  One  can  illustrate 
this  principle  indefinitely ;  and  it  is  of  boundless  impor- 
tance for  the  practical  training  of  the  will.  Voluntary  acts 
come  to  be  such  only  after  they  have  first  been  involun- 
tarily performed,  their  origin  lying  in  the  realms  of  instinct, 
of  imitation,  of  chance  experience,  and  of  passing  impulse. 
Inner,  or  psychological  "power  of  initiative,"  so  far  as 
concerns  the  positive  content  of  our  actions,  the  will  has 
none  whatever.  I  cannot  will  to  swim,  unless  I  have  first 
learned  how  to  swim.  I  cannot  learn,  except  by  the  grad- 
ual adjustment  of  inherited  tendencies  to  environment,  and 
of  past  habits  to  new  situations.  I  can  will  to  set  about 
learning  to  swim ;  but  when  I  will  that,  I  will  merely  old 
deeds,  such  as  walking  in  shallow  water — a  process  which  I 
this  time  can  choose  to  continue  until  I  am  beyond  my 
depth.  In  that  case  the  situation  becomes  at  once  novel 
enough  ;  but  the  novelty  is  not  now  in  me,  but  precisely  in 
the  situation ;  and  what  I  thereupon  do,  namely,  to  strug- 
gle, to  gasp,  to  try  to  obey  the  orders  of  the  swimmer  at 
my  side,  and  so  on,  involves  the  reverse  of  conscious  origi- 
nality. If  I  at  last  learn  to  swim,  that  is  because,  after  a 
time,  I  somehow  involuntarily  hit  upon  the  right  combina- 
tion of  movements,  and  get  used  to  the  strange  situation. 


ORIGINALITY  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS.  253 

It  is  just  so  if  I  try  to  write  anything  novel.  My  will  can 
lead  me  into  the  deep  waters  of  literary  effort.  It  cannot 
teach  me  what  to  do  there  besides  kicking  and  gasping,  as 
many  poor  poets  involuntarily  do.  We  imagine  the  will  to 
be  originative  merely  because,  very  often,  by  repeating  old 
deeds,  we  can  get  ourselves  into  unheard  of  situations.  But 
it  is  life,  in  such  cases,  that  contains  novelties ;  it  is  not 
we  who  are  original.  The  maiden  says  nothing  original  or 
novel  when  she  says  either  No  or  Yes.  Two  lives  happen  just 
then  to  depend  upon  her  word  ;  but  that  has  nothing  to  do 
with  her  originality.  She  is  usually,  in  just  such  matters, 
an  extremely  unoriginal  person,  who  behaves  very  much 
as  the  other  women  from  time  immemorial  have  behaved. 

Volition,  then — and  that,  too,  without  the  least  reference 
to  the  question  whether  the  will  is  free  or  not — is,  as  to  the 
contents  of  our  voluntary  acts,  a  wholly  unoriginal  pro- 
cess. As  for  Intellect — that,  with  respect  to  most  of  its 
factors  and  processes,  constantly  involves  elements  of  novel- 
ty, but  leaves  at  best  a  very  sharply  limited  room,  in  all  of 
its  human  conscious  activities,  for  what  can  be  called  indi- 
vidual initiative.  Why  this  has  to  be  the  case,  it  is  easy  to 
see.  Novelty  may  be  possessed  to  any  extent  by  the  facts 
of  our  external  experience,  or  by  the  experiences  due  to  our 
merely  physical  condition.  But  an  experience  of  novelties 
in  the  outer  world,  or  of  novel  physical  states  of  our  bodies, 
forms  no  part  of  our  intellectual  originality.  A  comet,  an 
earthquake,  an  explosion,  an  attack  of  the  grippe — all  these 
are  novelties.  But  the  one  who  experiences  these  things 
does  not  thereby  become  original  or  "  creative."  In  fact  it 
is  just  such  extreme  novelties  that,  so  long  as  they  remain 
novelties,  confuse  us,  and  help  the  intellectual  life  least 
We  know  best  what  we  best  recognize ;  and  that,  while  it 
has  some  novel  features,  is  essentially  like  what  we  have 
known  before ;  and  is  in  so  far  not  a  new  thing.  Learning 
means  assimilating ;  and  the  rate  of  our  learning  of  novel- 


254  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

ties  has  to  be  comparatively  slow,  because  we  need  gradually 
to  assimilate  them  to  one  another,  and  to  our  own  past. 
Hence  most  intellectual  processes  are  conservative  in  type ; 
and  essentially  novel  ideas  enter  the  conscious  intellect 
only  gradually.  Most  rapidly  we  get  possession  of  hosts  of 
new  ideas  when,  as  in  childhood,  we  acquire  them  by  direct 
social  imitation  of  the  preexistent  ideas  of  others,  or  when, 
as  in  later  years,  we  get  them  from  our  fellows  by  pro- 
cesses of  reading,  of  listening,  and  of  watching  the  world's 
ways.  But  all  such  externally  acquired  novelties  are  not 
our  own  in  any  originative  sense.  Moreover,  in  a  large  meas- 
ure, the  intellect  is  essentially  and  explicitly  concerned  in 
learning  and  imitating  the  truth  of  things — truth  which  we 
find,  and  which  we  do  not  make ;  so  that  there  is  a  sense  in 
which  the  normal  intellect  spurns  many  sorts  of  originali- 
ty, even  if  they  offer  themselves,  and  professes  itself  as  not 
merely  by  accident  unoriginal  and  dependent,  but  also  by 
choice  devoted  to  submissive  repetition  of  the  truth.  There 
is  indeed,  in  all  this,  always  room  left  for  a  certain  sort  of 
originality,  but  plainly,  in  the  normal  case,  the  possible 
range  of  conscious  and  fruitful  intellectual  originality  is, 
psychologically  speaking,  very  decidedly  limited.  The  re- 
sult so  far  is  that  it  is  at  least  very  hard  to  define  what 
constitutes  the  realm  that  is  still  left  open,  in  the  conscious 
intellectual  life,  for  genuine  and  valuable  originality. 

But  the  realm  of  Feeling  still  remains  as  the  one  region 
of  mental  life  not  so  far  considered.  Here  the  scope  for 
possible  originality  is  much  larger ;  and,  in  fact,  the  most 
original  literary  men  are  obviously  such,  in  a  measure,  by 
virtue  of  the  strong  individuality  possessed  by  their  char- 
acteristic emotions,  interests,  and  tones  of  inner  life.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  must  be  insisted  that  mere  novelty,  or 
individuality  of  feeling,  never  by  itself  constitutes  any  in- 
dependently valuable  type  of  originality.  The  nervous- 
ly degenerate,  the  "  cranks,"  the  acute,  nervous  sufferers, 


ORIGINALITY  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS.  255 

know  of  a  great  variety  of  feelings,  both  agreeable  and 
disagreeable,  both  transient  and  lasting,  which  are  often 
marked,  in  particular  cases,  by  very  decidedly  individual 
and  original  shadings,  and  which  therefore  give  their  sub- 
ject, upon  occasion,  a  strong  and  often  not  unfounded 
sense  that  he  is  very  "  different  from  common  men."  But 
such  originality  of  feeling  constitutes  something  very  re- 
mote from  original  genius,  unless,  indeed,  the  abnormity 
gets  precisely  that  union  with  the  life  of  the  intellect  which 
does  distinguish  true  originality  in  great  minds.  One  is 
never  a  man  of  parts  because  of  his  novel  feelings ;  genius 
implies  knowing  how  to  use  feelings. 

The  result  so  far  is  that,  as  a  matter  of  analysis,  the 
most  characteristic  processes  of  the  conscious  intellect  are, 
in  the  main,  imitative,  assimilative,  and  in  so  far  uncre- 
ative.  The  conscious  will  is  similarly  an  unoriginal  pro- 
cess. On  the  other  hand,  the  feelings  are  a  possible  source 
of  very  manifold  and  individual  mental  processes,  but  as 
mere  feelings  they  are  not  an  obvious  source  of  what  is 
valuable  about  originality,  since  a  perfectly  useless  degener- 
ate may  have  countless  feelings  of  the  most  novel  and 
intense  character  without  any  happy  or  creative  result. 
The  question  then  becomes :  What  union  of  intellectual 
and  effective  processes  is  responsible  for  valuable  origi- 
nality ? 

A  step  nearer  we  come  to  the  answer  to  this  question 
when  we  observe  in  what  senses  a  mental  creation,  such  as 
a  work  of  literary  art,  can  possibly  be  novel  at  all.  The 
truth  of  things  an  artist  finds,  but  does  not  make.  Even 
where  a  man  of  action  creates  new  truth  by  voluntary  pro- 
cesses,  as  a  statesman  or  a  conqueror  creates,  the  activity, 
just  in  so  far  as  it  is  voluntary,  is,  psychologically  speak- 
ing, as  we  saw,  decidedly  unoriginal  and  unoriginative.  And 
as  fact,  the  greatest  artists,  however  original,  are  also  imi- 
tators— imitators  of  artistic  traditions,  of  the  forms  of  their 
18 


256  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

mother  tongue,  of  life,  of  human  nature,  of  truth ;  and,  un- 
less they  were  thus  in  a  due  measure  imitative,  they  would 
be  lunatics.  Their  creative  power  is  an  extremely  relative 
thing,  which  must  be  confined  within  strict  limits.  But 
there  are  three  ways  in  which  sane  originality  can  display 
itself.  They  are  these :  (1)  One  can  be  original  in  the  style 
or  form  which  he  gives  to  his  work ;  (2)  One  can  be  original 
in  the  selection  of  the  objects  which  he  imitates ;  (3)  One 
can  be  original  in  the  invention  of  relatively  novel  com- 
binations of  old  material. 

The  first  of  these  forms  of  originality  exists,  in  some 
very  limited  degree,  in  the  activities  of  even  the  most  un- 
artistic  and  commonplace  people,  in  so  far  as  they  possess 
individuality  at  all.  The  voice  of  your  friend,  by  which 
you  recognize  him  in  a  crowd,  the  step,  the  bearing,  the 
little  tricks  of  gesture,  the  handwriting,  of  any  individual 
— these  are  features  comparable  in  nature  to  those  often 
indescribable  characters  which  distinguish  the  style  of  one 
artist  from  that  of  another.  In  commonplace  people  these 
particularities  of  bearing,  of  manner,  of  personal  quality,  are 
of  only  domestic  or  neighborly  interest.  In  great  artists 
such  features  chance  to  appear  extremely  significant.  One's 
individual  style  colors  both  one's  purely  physical  activities 
and  one's  mentally  significant  ways  of  expressing  one's 
self.  Such  a  style  may  be  modified  by  conscious  self-obser- 
vation, but  no  voluntary  process  can  ever  transform  it.  In 
its  mentally  valuable  phenomena  it  is  commonly  rather  the 
embodiment  of  one's  ruling  tones  of  feeling,  one's  prevailing 
moods,  than  of  any  consciously  voluntary  or  intellectual 
process.  Intellect  and  will  may  toil  to  improve  it,  but  be- 
yond certain  limits  they  toil  in  vain.  Its  origin  is  in  the 
unconscious  realm.  Its  originality  is  due  to  hereditary  fac- 
tors. Its  basis  is  something  born  and  not  made.  It  often 
constitutes,  in  artists,  the  most  inscrutable  aspect  of  their 
genius.  Its  value  is  due  to  our  fondness  of  whatever  most 


ORIGINALITY  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS.  257 

suggests  fascinating  individuality.  Our  aesthetic  demands 
upon  the  individual  are,  like  those  of  the  moral  law,  para- 
doxical. We  want  an  individual  to  do  what  his  fellows 
do,  to  imitate,  to  follow  custom  ;  and  yet  all  the  while  we 
want  him  to  be  something  unique,  to  give  us  a  fascinating 
personality  that  nobody  else  can  show  us.  Thus  we  object 
to  everybody  whose  deeds  are  unconventional ;  yet  when  a 
man  is  merely  conventional,  we  despise  him  as  a  common- 
place fellow.  How  then  shall  our  neighbor  please  us  ?  One 
answer  is :  He  must  in  a  large  measure  do  the  thing  that 
everybody  does — he  must  follow  the  modes  of  the  day,  say 
the  ordinary  things,  but  he  must  do  all  this  in  his  own 
unique  way,  in  a  style  that  is  his  own.  Then,  when  he  thus 
imitates  inimitably,  as  a  great  actor  does,  we  say.  in  case 
this  his  individual  style  chances  somehow  to  touch  our 
feelings,  so  that  they  surge  up  in  sympathy  with  his  own — 
we  say  :  What  a  manner  he  has !  It  is  thus  that  the  great 
artist  impresses  us,  so  far  as  concerns  his  literary  style. 
Herein  his  personality  gets  an  embodiment  whose  only 
directly  conscious  representative  in  mind  is  his  prevailing 
way  of  feeling.  But  his  way  of  feeling  colors  the  form  of 
all  his  intellectual  work. 

The  second  form  of  originality,  named  above,  has  a 
more  obviously  intellectual  character.  An  artist's  selection 
of  his  themes,  of  his  ideals,  of  the  characters,  situations,  and 
so  forth,  which  he  chooses  to  imitate,  belongs  of  course 
amongst  what  we  commonly  call  the  labors  of  his  intellect 
Yet  one  must  not  misunderstand  the  true  relations  here. 
Consciously  the  artist  may  think,  "  What  shall  I  choose  f 
What  shall  I  write  about  ?  What  shall  I  depict  f "  But 
the  best  choices  of  anybody's  life  are  made  for  unconscious 
reasons. 

The  third  form  of  originality,  that  of  the  larger  combi- 
nations of  one's  ideas  and  acts,  is  the  highest,  and,  in  its 
best  forms,  the  rarest  of  all.  Tet  no  artist  lias  ever  been 


258  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

able  to  tell  us,  with  conscious  truthfulness,  how  such  origi- 
nality of  combination  is  accomplished.  Nor  do  we  know  in 
our  own  cases.  The  processes  of  combination  are  very 
slow.  What  it  has  taken  you  years  to  learn,  may  at  last 
appear  in  its  unity  before  you.  At  the  moments  when  your 
mental  combinations  come  to  light,  you  may  be  getting 
what  seems  to  be  a  bird's-eye  view  of  an  entire  life.  But 
how  you  came  to  get  this  view,  your  consciousness,  which 
is  of  the  moment,  cannot  tell  you. 

In  sum,  in  case  of  all  these  three  sorts  of  originality, 
you  are  dealing  with  a  complex  union  of  mental  elements 
belonging  to  the  feelings  and  to  the  intellectual  life.  But 
how  the  happy  union  takes  place,  how  the  valuable  origi- 
nality is  acquired,  your  consciousness  does  not  inform  you 
— and  that  for  two  reasons.  First,  your  consciousness  never 
lights  up  the  depths  of  your  personal  temperament — never 
shows  you,  at  any  moment,  precisely  why  you  feel  as  you 
do.  And  secondly,  your  originality,  where  it  is  important, 
has  to  do  with  the  gradual  organization  of  your  life  as  a 
whole,  while  your  consciousness,  limited  as  it  is  to  a  very 
short  span,  flickers  along  from  moment  to  moment,  and 
never  reveals  the  true  meaning  of  your  life-processes  in 
their  linkage,  growth,  and  rationality.  Hence  your  con- 
scious moments  show  you  little  but  dependent  volitional 
and  intellectual  processes,  which  are  powerless  to  reveal  the 
secret  of  their  own  evolution.  The  feelings  of  the  mo- 
ment may  be  consciously  original,  but  need  not  on  that 
account  be  important.  Your  current  consciousness  inter- 
prets your  true  individuality,  much  as  lightning  at  night 
shows  the  storm  clouds.  Whence  the  storm  came,  and 
whither  it  whirls,  the  lightning,  like  your  passing  moments 
of  conscious  life,  is  too  brief  to  show.  We  men  are  always 
struggling  to  grasp  eternity  in  a  fleeting  instant. 

Yet  of  course  our  human  type  of  consciousness,  with 
all  its  flickering,  is  the  best  type  that  we  have ;  and  the 


ORIGINALITY  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS.  259 

practical  problem  remains :  What  shall  I  do  consciously 
to  direct  myself  towards  my  best  type  of  originality  in 
word  and  deed  ? 

The  answer  runs  thus:  First,  see  why  it  is  that  your 
human  sort  of  consciousness  never  can  fully  reveal  to  you, 
at  any  moment,  what  is  best  or  most  original  about  your 
own  individuality.  Seeing  this,  give  up  the  vain  desire 
to  seem,  at  any  instant,  consciously  original.  You  could 
only  deceive  yourself  by  following  that  vain  desire. 
What  seemed  to  you  most  inevitable,  and  perhaps  most 
commonplace,  your  fellows  would  often  find  the  most 
original  and  the  best  about  you.  What  pleased  you  as 
your  most  original  product,  others  would  see  to  be  a  poor 
imitation,  or  else  a  trivially  wayward  mood.  For  the  rest, 
consciously  to  aim  towards  originality  in  your  whole  de- 
velopment, and  in  your  organized  individual  self-expres- 
sion, is  not  to  aim  at  the  momentary  consciousness  :  "  Just 
now  I  see  myself  as  an  originator."  Your  self-conquest  lies 
in  saying,  "  I  will  serve  as  if  I  were  nothing  but  a  servant, 
but  all  the  while  I  will  not  fear  to  be  unique  in  my  form 
and  plan  of  service."  The  best  thing,  then,  that  one  can 
consciously  do  towards  attaining  effective  individuality  is 
to  put  down  one's  paltry  Fears  of  being  as  original,  in  style 
and  in  expression,  as  fate,  despite  all  of  one's  loyalty  to  ser- 
vice, chances  to  make  one.  Think,  then,  thus  :  "  I  have  a 
right  to  be  unique  ;  I  will  not  fear  to  be  unique  when,  as  a 
matter  of  fortune,  I  find  myself  so ;  but  I  will  not  at  any 
moment  try  to  feel  as  if  I  were  just  then  in  the  least  an 
originator.  I  will  consciously  serve  and  efface  myself  ;  but 
when  my  individuality  chances,  nevertheless,  to  express 
itself,  I  will  rejoice  in  the  happy  accident  of  having  un- 
consciously done  what  vindicates  my  right  to  be  this  indi- 
viilual."  With  this  in  mind,  with  this  assurance  that  the 
effectively  best  about  you  must  grow  up  in  its  own  way, 
and  must  grow,  so  far  as  your  human  mind  goes,  uw<>n 


260  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

sciously,  devote  your  conscious  life  to  putting  yourself  into 
a  serious  office,  where  plenty  of  wholesome  experience  will 
come  of  itself ;  and  then  wait  for  the  outcome  with  assur- 
ance. Whatever  originality  is  yours  will  then  come  as  a 
matter  of  life.  For  it  is  Life,  and  not  Consciousness,  that, 
in  us  men,  is  the  originator.  Yet  the  conscious  purpose  to 
become  original  is  not  unwise,  if  it  only  takes  the  form  of 
choosing  to  accept  that  sort  of  devotion  to  life  which  en- 
sures the  conscious  dependence  of  our  will  and  of  our 
intellect,  but  the  actual  freedom  of  our  individual  tem- 
perament 


MEISTER  ECKHART* 

BROTHER  ECKHART,  later  known  as  a  Magister  of  the 
University  of  Paris,  and  accordingly  called  Meister  Eck- 
hart,  was  born  about  1260,  in  the  upper  Rhineland,  and 
died  in  1327.  The  first  in  the  series  of  German  mystics, 
he  was  the  direct  teacher  of  the  more  popularly  known 
Tauler,  and  the  beginner  of  all  the  later  German  mystical 
movements.  In  the  order  of  the  Friars  Preachers,  or  Do- 
minicans, he  was  early  a  prior,  later  a  provincial,  and  later 
again  a  prior.  He  held  offices,  in  his  order,  in  Erfurt,  in 
Frankfort,  in  Strassburg,  in  Cologne ;  he  was  twice  at  the 
University  of  Paris,  as  learner  and  as  lecturer ;  and  won,  in 
his  time,  no  small  fame  as  a  preacher.  In  the  annals  of  his 
Church  and  of  his  order,  he  appears  as  a  man  who,  however 
devoted  and  loyal  his  purpose,  taught,  in  addition  to  the 
faith  of  the  Church,  certain  reputed  errors  that  finally  re- 
ceived, although  not  until  two  years  after  his  death,  the 
official  condemnation  of  the  Pope.  In  the  history  of  Ger- 
man thought,  occupying  as  he  does  the  place  of  the  first  phi- 
losopher of  mark  to  write  in  German,  he  has  been  given 
very  various  degrees  of  importance  by  the  historians,  accord- 
ing to  the  estimate  that  different  writers  have  placed  upon 
the  originality  of  his  ideas.  As  a  fact,  so  far  as  his  mere 
opinions  are  concerned,  the  most  recent  scholarly  research 

*  A  paper  road  before  the  Plymouth  School  of  Ethicn  in  the  summer  oi 
1894. 


262  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

has  come  more  and  more  to  see  in  him,  not  so  much  the 
qualities  of  an  independently  constructive  philosopher,  but 
rather  the  character  of  a  fairly  representative  Catholic  mystic 
of  the  thirteenth  or  fourteenth  century,  whose  religious  ca- 
reer was,  however,  much  modified  by  the  really  original  per- 
sonal temperament  that  led  him  in  the  end,  although  not  by 
his  own  intent,  to  the  verge  of  pronounced  heresy.*  And  it 
is  in  this  character,  as  a  Catholic  mystic,  of  no  very  novel 
philosophical  opinions,  but  of  a  very  marked  individuality 
of  personal  character  and  influence,  that  I  shall  here  try  to 
portray  Meister  Eckhart.  That  reputation  for  startling  origi- 
nality of  speculation  which  many  writers  have  sought  to 
give  to  this  first  in  the  long  series  of  German  philosophical 
writers,  has  been  due  largely  to  the  very  fact  that  Eckhart 
wrote  and  preached  upon  the  profoundest  speculative  topics 
in  the  German  tongue,  with  the  deliberate  intention  of  initi- 
ating the  people  into  the  deepest  mysteries  of  their  faith. 
He  first  thus  translated  into  the  vernacular  speech  of  his 
land  thoughts  which  were  not  new  to  scholastic  philoso- 
phers, but  which  were  sure  to  be  startling  to  laymen,  and 
which  to  us  now,  if  we  forget  the  earlier  history  of  mysti- 
cism, have  an  air  of  uniqueness,  which  is  increased  by  the 
skill  of  Eckhart's  often  marvellous  German  style,  and  by 
the  sincere  tone  of  personal  experience  which  runs  through 
all  that  he  says.  A  mystic  must  always  seem,  when  you 
consider  him  by  himself,  an  original  person,  because  it  is 
not  authority  but  intensely  individual  experience  to  which 
he  constantly  appeals.  Before  I  am  done,  I  shall  especially 
indicate  the  practical  side  of  Eckhart's  life  work.  It  is 
therefore  at  the  outset  enough  to  say  that  he  was  the  first 
who  translated  speculative  mysticism  into  the  German 
tongue,  in  order  to  indicate  how  wide  the  range  of  his 
practical  importance  is,  in  view  of  what  was  to  be  the  fu- 

*  Cf.  Harnack,  Dogmengeschichte,  iii,  376. 


MEISTER  ECKHART.  263 

ture  of  the  German  mind.  Learn,  then,  from  what  fol- 
lows something  of  how  it  felt  about  1300  to  be  a  Catholic 
mystic  and  at  the  same  time  to  be  a  philosophical  Ger- 
man missionary  to  the  people. 


The  order  of  St.  Dominic,  confirmed  as  an  order  of  the 
Church  in  1216,  had  grown  by  the  end  of  that  century  to 
be  one  of  the  most  important  instruments  of  Catholic  piety 
and  learning.  To  this  order  had  belonged  Albertus  Magnus, 
and  his  still  greater  pupil,  St.  Thomas  Aquinas.  In  the 
care  of  these  men,  and  of  their  immediate  pupils,  the  scho- 
lastic philosophy  had  reached  its  most  classic  expression. 
St  Thomas  died  in  1274,  when  Eckhart  was  still  a  boy. 
Albert,  who  outlived  his  own  pupil,  died  in  1280.  The  order 
of  the  Friars  Preachers,  according  to  the  wording  of  its  own 
constitutions,*  "  was  principally  and  essentially  designed 
for  preaching  and  teaching,  in  order  thereby  to  communi- 
cate to  others  the  fruits  of  contemplation  and  to  procure 
the  salvation  of  souls."  The  triumphs  that  its  great  schol- 
ars won  in  the  cause  of  philosophical  and  theological  learn- 
ing were  therefore  intended  by  themselves  as  a  means  to 
an  end.  The  faith  was  to  be  defended ;  heresy  was  to  be 
refuted ;  the  world  was  to  be  taught.  The  fruits  of  contem- 
plation were  to  be  communicated  to  others. 

Now  Eckhart  appears,  in  every  recorded  line  of  his  writ- 
ings, as  one  who  understood  the  constitutions  of  the  Do- 
minicans in  a  very  literal  sense.  He  was  very  early  trained 
to  follow,  and  in  time  to  administer,  the  discipline  of  his 
order;  he  received  a  thorough  preparation  in  philosophy 
and  in  theology  ;  he  gave  the  closest  attention  to  the  art  of 
preaching  with  effect  in  the  vernacular  tongue.  All  this 
was  in  the  line  of  his  education  for  his  calling.  The  tech- 

*  Drane,  HUtory  of  St  Dominic  (edition  of  1891),  p.  164. 


264:  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

nical  finish  of  much  of  his  preserved  work  reveals  the  ex- 
pert veteran,  who  must  have  been  made  such  by  long  and 
merciless  exercise  in  harness.  Mystics  have  often  been 
essentially  wayward  and  capricious  persons,  of  sentimental 
nature  and  rebellious  habits.  Against  just  such  wayward- 
ness, however,  was  the  monastic  training  of  the  mendicant 
orders  especially  directed ;  and  this  man  was  thoroughly 
hardened  to  service ;  was  of  rigid  life,  and  of  well-knit, 
although  gradually  progressive  ideas ;  and  as  far  as  possible 
his  sentiment  was  kept  under  the  control  of  his  insight. 
So  far  you  have  just  the  monk.  But  his  was  withal,  indeed, 
an  extremely  rich  and  individual  temperament,  and  one  in 
which  the  deepest  emotion,  when  once  it  was  permitted  to 
go  free,  found  ample  room.  Meanwhile  he  was  rugged  and 
manly,  being  impatient  of  mere  formulas,  fond  of  para- 
doxes, quick  and  original  in  expression.  A  very  marked 
personal  piety,  too,  inspired  him.  He  was  a  faithful  monk, 
but  he  must  go  beyond  the  mere  formalities  of  his  profes- 
sion. He  needed  to  restate  everything  in  his  own  words. 
He  could  rest  in  none  but  absolute  solutions  of  his  prob- 
lems. And  he  must,  indeed,  communicate  to  others  the 
fruits  of  his  contemplation. 

Accordingly  his  experience,  in  its  most  general  form, 
was  this :  He  was  throughout  minded  to  preach  the  Catholic 
faith,  and  to  move  his  hearers  to  live  it  in  their  daily  lives. 
But  the  faith  had  now  received,  through  the  scholastic 
philosophy,  an  extremely  elaborate  formulation.  And  the 
Rhineland,  in  Eckhart's  time,  was  a  region  where  religious 
experience  was  intense  and  manifold,  where  individual  in- 
tuitions of  the  highest  truth  abounded,  and  were  often 
very  waywardly  followed  out  to  heretical  conclusions,  and 
where  more  or  less  irregular  efforts  to  found  and  to  develop 
religious  orders,  and  to  save  souls  by  extraordinary  devices, 
were  frequent  and  significant  phenomena  of  social  life. 
Practical  mysticism,  the  ordering  of  the  life  of  an  individ- 


MEISTER  ECKHART.  265 

ual  upon  the  basis  of  the  sensation  of  some  form  of  imme- 
diate communion  with  God,  was,  in  that  time  and  region, 
in  the  air.  The  communities  known  by  the  vaguely  applied 
names  of  Beghinen  and  Begharden — more  or  less  irregular 
unions  of  women  and  of  men,  as  the  case  might  be,  de- 
voted to  some  sort  of  religious  separation  from  the  world, 
and  to  the  pursuit  of  a  piety  that  was  not  always  free  from 
the  well-founded  accusation  of  heresy — these  were  familiar 
phenomena  along  the  upper  and  lower  Rhine  in  the  thir- 
teenth century.  The  people  in  general  longed  for  religious 
guides.  The  previous  ages  of  conflict  between  the  Church 
and  the  empire  had  left  behind  them,  at  the  end  of  the  cen- 
tury, a  perplexed  people  and  much  confusion  of  faith.  It 
was  in  large  part  for  the  sake  of  meeting  just  such  spiritual 
needs  as  this,  both  in  Germany  and  in  other  lands,  that 
the  Church  had  so  warmly  favored  that  organization 
of  regular  armies  of  her  trained  servants  which  occurred 
through  the  rise  of  the  two  mendicant  orders,  the  Francis- 
cans and  the  Dominicans  themselves.  And  so  Eckhart 
undertook,  as  his  own  special  life  work,  the  guiding  of  the 
religious  life  of  his  hearers  by  means  of  the  translation 
of  the  philosophy  of  his  Church  and  his  order  into  the 
language  of  the  people.* 

But  for  Eckhart  scholastic  speculation  must  now  be 
brought  over  from  Latin  into  German,  from  the  technical 
speech  of  that  most  highly  elaborated  of  philosophical 
methods  into  words  suited  to  all  who  looked  to  their  own 
highest  good,  who  were  submissive  to  God,  who  aspired, 
and  who  had  overcome  themselves.  For  to  all  such  Eck- 

*  For  this  general  conception  of  Eckhart's  life  work,  due  in  large  part 
to  the  recent  researches  of  Denifle,  but  also  in  part  maintained  by 
Prcgcr,  see  (in  addition  to  Harnack's  book,  above  cited,  and  to  Preger's 
account  in  his  Oeschichto  d.  Mystik),  Loof's  Dogmonpeachichte,  p. 
288,  and  Windel band's  History  of  Philosophy  (English  translation),  p. 
834. 


266  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

hart,  as  he  tells  us,  addressed  his  speech.*  And  according- 
ly such  speculation  must  tend  from  the  outset  to  be  modi- 
fied as  it  was  delivered.  The  truths  of  philosophy  must  be 
linked  to  the  actual  experience  of  the  faithful.  Yes,  what 
were  these  truths  but  the  outcome  of  learned  reflection 
upon  such  experience  ?  Eckhart  must  preach  with  the 
understanding — ay,  but  with  the  spirit  also.  He  had  been 
early  trained  to  a  sense  of  the  importance  of  learning.  But, 
once  more,  these  so  precious  fruits  of  contemplation  must 
be  communicated  to  others ;  yes,  must  be  built  up  anew  in 
every  hearer's  mind,  as  the  actual  outcome,  as  the  very  form 
and  body  of  his  own  personal  and  religious  life.  For  all 
this  meant  the  one  great  object — the  salvation  of  souls,  the 
guidance  of  the  perplexed,  the  portrayal  of  the  truth.  Such 
popular  translation  of  philosophy,  in  case  a  man's  phi- 
losophy means  to  himself  in  any  sense  the  mirror  of  human 
life,  the  theory  of  passion,  must  always  tend,  in  the  man 
who  thus  translates,  to  a  continual  renewal  and  refreshment 
of  his  most  fundamental  thinking  itself.  The  technical 
weaver  of  philosophical  theories  may  or  may  not  bear  in 
mind  the  fact  that  had  it  not  been  for  the  vital  perplexi- 
ties of  experience — the  immediate  issues  of  life — the  prob- 
lems of  the  schools  would  never  have  come  into  existence. 
Accordingly,  such  a  technical  student  may  long  neglect 
the  renewed  examination  of  his  own  fundamental  princi- 
ples for  the  sake  of  devoting  himself  to  the  development 
of  their  most  remote  theoretical  consequences.  But  the 
man  who  wants  to  make  his  philosophy  immediately  in- 
teresting to  the  serious-minded  amongst  the  people,  must 
not  dwell  upon  those  remoter  consequences  so  much  as  upon 
principles ;  for  it  is  just  the  most  fundamental  principle  of 
life  that  the  unlearned  inquirer  desires  to  get.  People 
naturally  begin  in  philosophy  with  the  most  critical  and 

*  Cf.  Pfeifler's  edition,  Deutsche  Mystikcr,  ii,  p.  2. 


MEISTER  ECKHART.  267 

tremendous  of  its  issues.  But  if  you  are  to  translate  such 
fundamental  principles  into  the  speech  of  your  hearer's 
spiritual  experience,  if  you  are  to  show  him  that  the 
most  abstruse  truth  walks  daily  beside  him,  well,  then, 
daily  you  too  must  experience  and  must  restate  to  your- 
self this  abstrusely  spiritual  truth  that  lies  at  the  basis  of 
your  life,  as  of  your  hearer's.  You  must  continually  re- 
initiate yourself  into  the  mysteries  of  your  own  philo- 
sophical doctrine.  It  must  become  and  remain  a  personal 
as  well  as  a  technical  matter  with  you. 

Accordingly,  we  find  Eckhart,  although  in  many  re- 
spects a  Thomist,  and  also  a  sincere  follower  of  the  general 
traditions  of  Catholic  mysticism,  still  from  the  outset  evi- 
dently disposed  to  be  always  afresh  dependent  upon  his 
own  personal  experience  for  the  formulation  and  proof 
of  the  philosophy  that  he  expounds  to  his  hearers.  Learn- 
ing is  there  and  at  his  call,  but  while  he  preaches  he  keeps 
it  in  the  background  of  his  mind.  Authorities  he  can  cite 
in  numbers,  and,  like  Thomas,  he  is  especially  fond  of  cit- 
ing, sometimes  expressly,  sometimes  indirectly,  Aristotle, 
St  Augustine,  and  the  Neo-Platonic  Christian  writer 
known  to  the  scholastics  under  the  traditional,  although 
false,  name  of  Dionysius  the  Areopagite.  But  after  all  Eck- 
hart regards  mere  authority  in  itself  as  something  princi- 
pally serviceable  in  the  deepest  matters,  by  way  of  illustra- 
tion. In  physics  he  is,  to  be  sure,  altogether  dependent 
upon  Aristotle.  His  psychology  he  gets  in  part  from  St 
Augustine,  in  part  from  the  Aristotelian  conception  of  the 
Creative  Intelligence  as  it  had  then  been  interpreted  by  re- 
cent philosophy.  His  technically  theological  concepts  are, 
up  to  a  certain  point,  largely  Thomistic.  But  the  heart  of 
his  doctrine,  and  so  that  group  of  conceptions  which  in  the 
end  he  comes  most  to  love  and  to  expound — these  may 
indeed  be  found  more  or  less  expressed  in  Augustine,  in 
Dionysius,  in  Thomas  ;  but  Eckhart,  for  his  own  conscious- 


268  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

ness,  neither  believes  nor  expounds  these  opinions  precisely 
as  he  there  finds  them,  nor  yet  because  the  authorities  in 
any  fashion  support  them.  On  the  contrary,  he  is  conscious 
of  telling  the  truth  as  immediate  religious  experience, 
interpreted  by  the  light  of  reason,  reveals  this  truth  both 
to  himself  and  (for  so  he  firmly  holds)  to  every  properly 
guided  soul  amongst  his  hearers  also.  Hence  Eckhart's 
philosophy,  at  first  evidently  a  scholasticism,  became,  to  his 
own  thoughts,  as  he  actually  preached,  more  and  more  the 
record  of  a  soul  alone  with  God  and  with  the  absolute  truth. 
He  wandered  into  strange  regions  in  the  spiritual  world. 
St.  Thomas  had  sought  to  teach  this  age  afresh,  with  great 
elaboration  of  detail,  the  exact  sense  in  which  human  rea- 
son can  go  only  so  far,  and  needs  revelation  from  above  to 
guide  it  further.  The  precise  relation  of  natural  to  revealed 
religion  was  accordingly  one  of  the  chief  problems  of  philo- 
sophical discussion  in  that  period.  But  Eckhart,  in  his 
own  inner  experience,  erelong,  both  by  the  aid  of  Dio- 
nysius  and  by  virtue  of  his  own  meditation,  came  to  a  cer- 
tain wondrous  place  where  not  only  human  reason,  but,  as 
he  held,  all  reason,  sees  its  own  birth  out  of  something  be- 
yond reason,  out  of  something  that  is  essentially  a  divine 
mystery.  For  at  this  point  this  birth  of  reason  from  a  yet 
deeper  principle,  this  derivation  of  the  light  of  insight  from 
a  still  diviner  light  that  to  us  seems  darkness — all  this,  I 
say,  appeared  now  in  Eckhart's  mind  not  as  a  mere  acci- 
dent, dependent  only  upon  the  chance  that  some  things 
have  been  hidden  from  our  reason  in  this  life,  and  have 
been  revealed  only  to  our  faith — not  such  an  accident,  but 
an  essential  truth  of  things.  In  God,  too,  there  must  be 
something  corresponding  to  just  this  failure  of  reason  to 
finish  its  own  work.  The  highest  truth  of  religious  ex- 
perience, thinks  Eckhart,  is  that  the  Godhead  as  such 
simply  cannot  be  absolutely  revealed  to  any  form  of  ration- 
al insight,  human  or  divine.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  of  the 


MEISTER   ECKHART.  269 

very  essence  of  reason  itself  to  be  dependent  upon  some- 
thing that  is  not  reason.  And  this,  I  repeat,  is  not,  for 
Eckhart,  the  mere  mischance  of  our  human  reason,  but  the 
very  nature  of  all  reason.  Knowledge  of  God,  even  when 
complete,  and  just  because  of  its  completeness,  would  see 
its  own  very  self  as  essentially  rooted  in  a  certain  central 
mystery,  which  Eckhart  undertakes  to  define,  so  far  as  defi- 
nition is  possible.  That  this  i&  true,  Eckhart  constantly 
seeks  to  verify  afresh  in  his  own  experience.  The  con- 
ception in  question,  the  conception  of  a  principle  to  be 
called  the  One,  or  the  Godhead,  or  the  Absolute,  above 
knowledge,  yet  the  source  and  principle  of  knowledge,  is 
old  ;  it  is  Neo-Platonic — yes,  it  is  much  older  than  that 
It  is  almost  identical  with  the  conception  of  the  Abso- 
lute Self  or  Atinuii  of  the  earliest  Hindoo  speculation. 
But  Eckhart,  knowing  nothing  of  course  of  the  remoter 
sources  or  counterparts  of  his  conception,  and  himself 
learning  it  in  the  main  from  Dionysius,  discovers  the  ever- 
lastingly fresh  and  convincing  verification  of  it  in  his  own 
religious  life.  And  now — this  is  just  the  essential  feature 
of  the  man,  in  so  far  as  he  is  a  typical  mystic — this  concep- 
tion of  a  central  mystery  at  the  very  heart  and  source  of 
the  highest  knowledge  Eckhart  treats  not  as  a  merely 
theoretical  matter,  but  as  an  intensely  practical  concern. 
The  salvation  of  the  soul  depends  upon  a  certain  act  of 
rising  above  knowledge  to  what  is  beyond  knowledge. 

n. 

I  suppose  that  this  central  notion  of  Eckhart,  as  of 
most  speculative  mystics,  will  seem  at  first  sight  either  a 
trivial  commonplace,  or  an  unnecessarily  abstruse  doctrine, 
according  as  it  chances  to  strike  you.  That  the  world  shall 
have  something  Unknowable  at  the  heart  of  it  is,  in  this 
age  of  Herbert  Spencer  and  of  the  Agnostics,  indeed  a 
trivial  enough  observation  of  popular  philosophy.  But 


270  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

Eckhart's  Unknowable,  the  wuste  Gottheit,  or  "  wilderness 
of  Godhead,"  of  wliich  he  loves  to  speak,  is  not  Spencer's 
Unknowable,  but  is  rather  the  One  above  knowledge  of 
Plotinus  and  of  Dionysius.  Eckhart's  reason  for  asserting 
this  as  the  final  truth  is  not  a  vexation  over  the  special 
limitations  of  human  knowledge,  but  is  a  certain  reflection 
upon  what  a  mystic  takes  to  be  the  absolute  nature  of  all 
knowledge.  It  is  the  fullness,  not  the  lack  of  insight  that 
seems  to  bring  the  speculative  mystic  to  this  affirmation, 
that  all  insight  must  be  rooted  in  mystery.  In  one  of  the 
preserved  Spruche  of  Meister  Eckhart  there  is  a  striking 
passage  whose  parallel  to  the  well-known  burden  of  the 
angel's  song  in  the  Prologue  to  Faust  is  all  the  more  remark- 
able, since  of  course  Goethe  can  have  known  nothing  of 
this  word  of  Eckhart's.  Goethe's  angels  sing : 

Der  Anblick  giebt  den  Engeln  Stiirke, 

Da  Keiner  dich  ergrunden  mag. 
Dnd  alle  deine  hohen  Werke, 

Sind  herrlich  wie  am  ersten  Tag. 

Eckhart  says :  "  When  God  created  the  angels,  the  first 
glance  that  they  took  was,  that  they  saw  the  Father's 
Essence,  and  how  the  Son  burst  forth  from  the  heart  of  the 
Father,  even  as  a  green  branch  from  a  tree.  This  glad- 
some vision  they  have  had  more  than  six  thousand  years, 
and  How  it  is,  that  they  know  this  very  day  as  much  [i.  e., 
as  little]  as  when  they  first  were  made.  And  that  is  from 
the  greatness  of  the  knowledge.  The  more  one  knows,  the 
less  one  understands."  * 

Now  this  principle,  which  is  as  old  as  mystical  philoso- 
phy, has  played  not  a  little  part,  as  I  must  at  once  assure 
you,  in  the  discussions  of  modern  Idealism.  Here  is  no 
place  to  face  the  issue  upon  its  own  merits.  But  I  want  you 

*  Pfeiffer's  Deutsche  Mystiker,  ii,  p.  606. 


MEISTER  ECKHART.  271 

to  remember  that  here  is  no  mere  whim  of  the  mystics,  but 
a  central  problem  of  all  philosophy.  Readers  who  know 
anything  of  the  modern  forms  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Uncon- 
scious in  philosophy  are  more  or  less  acquainted  with  types 
of  metaphysical  speculation  which  have  found  the  world 
in  essence  incomprehensible,  not  because  it  is  unspiritual, 
but  just  because  it  sball  be  known  to  be  spiritual,  while  the 
essence  of  spirituality  shall  be  something  beyond  any 
transparently  reflective  definition,  although  it  shall  be 
productive  of  all  the  possible  life  of  experience  and  of  reflec- 
tion, and  shall  be  known,  although  never  quite  compre- 
hended, as  such,  a  supreme  source  of  light.  The  motive  of 
this  special  sort  of  recognition  of  mystery  (of  a  mystery 
involved  in  the  very  light  of  the  spiritual  world),  and  the 
contrast  between  this  and  other  shapes  of  the  doctrine  of 
the  Unknowable,  are  not  hard  to  indicate,  if  one  may  be 
permitted  to  speak  for  a  moment  in  rather  modern  terms. 

The  common,  the  popular,  if  you  like,  the  relatively 
trivial  form  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Unknowable,  runs  thus: 
There  is  the  world  yonder,  which  goes  its  own  way,  and  ex- 
ists as  a  world  of  things  in  themselves.  Here,  however, 
is  a  creature  called  a  sentient,  or,  by  the  grace  of  evolution, 
a  more  or  less  rational  being.  He  wants  to  make  out  the 
nature  of  the  things  in  themselves.  He  can  do  so  only 
Inasmuch  as  eyes  and  ears,  smell  and  touch,  permit  him 
to  get  at  the  sense-data  that  his  wits  are  to  interpret  The 
things  give  him  the  sense-data.  No  further  can  he  go  than 
these  data  permit  Hence,  in  one  way  or  another,  as  he 
reflects,  he  finds  himself  cut  off  by  his  limited  senses  from 
the  real  truth  of  the  things.  He  has  not  data  enough.  No, 
he  could  not  possibly  have  data  enough.  For  a  thing  is 
never  a  sensation.  The  things  never  wander  through  your 
eyes.  Only  the  sensations  of  color,  of  smell,  of  touch, 
somehow  get  awakened  in  you  by  the  things.  And  so, 
too,  with  any  other  senses  that  one  might  have.  We  might 
10 


272  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

come  to  possess  countless  new  senses  added  to  our  present 
ones.  These  would  indeed  indefinitely  enrich  our  experi- 
ence ;  but  they  would  only  show  their  various  data,  never 
the  unconquerable  external  facts  as  such.  Das  dort  ist 
niemals  hier.  Experience  is  never  reality.  Hence  reality 
is  unknowable. 

This,  I  say,  is  the  usual  form  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Un- 
knowable. Spencer  indeed  gets  somewhat  beyond  this 
form,  being  himself  a  bit  of  an  undeveloped  mystic  ;  but  he 
never  really  reaches  the  other  form,  and  so  he  remains  in  a 
region  which  does  not  now  further  concern  us.  Your 
genuine  mystic,  whether  Neo-Platonic  in  his  categories, 
or  fashioned  more  like  a  modern  idealist,  takes  a  totally 
different  view  of  the  universe,  and  of  the  nature  of  truth ; 
and  accordingly  he  defines  quite  otherwise  the  nature  of 
his  mystery.  Observe  still  closer  the  contrast 

The  world,  so  our  typical  mystic  holds,  is  not  an  Un- 
knowable Reality,  external  to  all  knowing  beings.  It  is 
in  deepest  essence  a  spiritual  world,  i.  e.,  it  is  the  world  that 
exists  in  truth,  not  apart  from  any  knowing  being,  but  in 
and  for,  or  else  wholly  by  the  ever-sustaining  will  and 
pleasure,  of  a  being  who  is  essentially  omniscient,  i.  e.,  a 
being  who  knows  whatever  can  logically  become  know- 
able,  and  what  can  logically  become  knowable  is  not  a 
world  of  things  in  themselves,  but  of  ideas,  or  of  facts 
whose  only  reality  is  that  they  express  or  embody  ideas. 
To  exemplify  by  Eckhart's  own  case — our  Meister,  as  a 
follower  of  Thomas,  held  that,  in  advance  of  the  creation, 
the  world  of  truth  was  represented  in  and  so,  in  an  inner 
sense,  was  eternally  existent  for  the  divine  knowledge  as  a 
world  of  archetypal  Ideas — Ideas,  namely,  of  everything 
afterwards  created,  as  well  as  of  all  that  was  never  created, 
but  that  remains  only  possible.  These  divine  Ideas  are  con- 
ceived as  in  nature  similar  to  Plato's  Ideas,  except  for  the 
fact  that  they  are  explicitly  to  be  defined  as  just  content  in 


ME1STER  ECKHART.  273 

the  divine  mind,  while  Plato's  ideas  existed  apart  from  any 
mind.  God  foreknew  all  things ;  he  saw  all  things  in 
eternity.  I,  for  instance,  was  there  too,  as  ideal  object 
amongst  ideas — one  of  the  objects  that  God  knew — I  in 
the  inmost  truth  of  me — not  yet  as  created  thing,  but 
as  thought  of  God.  Then,  God,  of  his  goodness,  choos- 
ing to  impart  himself,  chose  from  his  ideal  world,  the 
content  of  this  world,  and  willed  it  to  be.  Its  being — well 
Eckhart  holds  that  such  being  is  a  sort  of  divinely  sup- 
ported shadow-being.  "  If  God  withdrew  his  own  back  to 
himself,  all  creatures  would  become  nothing."  *  The  things 
have  no  true  being  of  themselves.  God  grants  them  the 
support  of  his  own  will  as  a  sort  of  substitute  for  being ; 
and  in  speaking  of  this  shadow-land  of  created  being  Eck- 
hart, who,  as  you  remember,  loves  paradoxes,  voices  him- 
self much  more  unguardedly  than  his  master  Thomas  had 
done,  whose  gentle  prudence  had  avoided,  by  means  of  fine- 
ly shaded  but  sometimes  rather  suspiciously  subtle  distinc- 
tions, the  conscious  admission  of  any  pantheistic  interpre- 
tation of  the  dependence  of  the  world  upon  God.  For 
Eckhart,  too,  as  for  Thomas,  the  creation  is  unquestionably 
to  be  thought  of  as  a  real  fact ;  but  Eckhart  has  no  great 
concern  with  what  may  have  constituted  this  creation,  be- 
yond the  consideration  that  God  gave  the  created  things 
nothing  that  they  have  any  right  to  keep  for  themselves. 
Thus,  then,  for  Eckhart,  the  spiritual  order  gets  defined.  In 
any  case,  the  world  preexisted  for  God,  in  God's  knowl- 
edge, and  as  a  group  of  divine  ideas.  In  existing  now  out 
of  God,  but  solely  by  God's  sustaining  will,  the  world  gets  no 
such  independence  as  makes  the  least  atom  of  it  otherwise 
than  absolutely  transparent  to  divine  knowledge.  And  so, 
for  God,  both  the  ideal  and  the  created  world  contain  no 
unknowable  elements.  Their  very  esse,  you  see,  is,  from 

*  Pfeiffer,  ii,  p.  51. 


274  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

the  divine  point  of  view,  joined  with  what,  for  God's  insight, 
would  constitute  their  divine  sort  of  percipi.  There  are,  for 
God,  no  things  in  themselves  at  all — only  ideas  in  God, 
and  shadow  creatures  of  his  will  without  him. 

This  is  the  familiar  Christian  conception  of  the  world  as 
a  spiritual  order,  only  interpreted  as  a  Thomistic  mystic  is 
disposed  to  view  it.  I  use  it  here  not  only  as  an  expression 
of  Eckhart's  own  view,  but  also  as  an  example  of  the 
general  type  of  conceptions  for  which  the  reality  is,  first 
of  all,  a  system  of  essentially  ideal  truth.  But  now  to 
come  nearer  to  the  general  reason  why  both  Christian 
(and,  as  we  shall  later  see,  non-Christian  speculative  mystics 
also)  have  found,  deep  hidden  at  the  very  centre  of  this 
world  of  divinely  spiritual  transparency,  another  element, 
one  of  impenetrable  mystery.  For  our  Christian  mystic,  as 
you  now  see,  the  divine  knowledge  is  not,  from  that  divine 
point  of  view,  engaged  in  the  business  of  conforming  to 
any  such  thing  as  an  extra-divine  reality,  but  depends  sole- 
ly upon  the  Godhead  itself.  God  is  not  obliged  to  conform 
his  ideas  to  things.  On  the  contrary,  the  things  are  help- 
lessly obliged  to  conform  themselves  to  his  ideas.  Hence 
no  external  limits  confine  this  divine  knowledge  to  any 
imperfect  sense  that  the  things  yonder  are  mysterious. 
There  is  for  this  view  no  Spencerian  Unknowable  outside  of 
knowledge.  The  world  of  knowledge  is  a  closed  sphere,  full 
of  light.  But  now  look  within  the  conceived  world  of 
knowledge  itself,  not  indeed  at  any  part  of  it,  but  first  at  the 
structure  and  then  at  the  root,  at  the  source  of  it.  There, 
within  this  world  of  the  divinely  transparent  truth,  is  still 
the  familiar  distinction  between  Subject  and  Object,  between 
knower  and  known,  between  the  Self  for  which  all  this  truth 
has  being  and  that  which  has  being  for  this  Self.  Now  for 
God,  as  the  mystic  has  thus  far  conceived  him,  the  known 
object  world,  of  eternal  ideas  and  of  temporally  created 
things,  is  such  that  God  as  knower  is  absolutely  adequate  to 


ME1STER  ECKHART.  275 

it,  while  this  world  itself  in  its  wholeness,  as  eternal  and  as 
temporal  world  together,  is  the  full  expression  of  God's  ne- 
cessary as  well  as  of  his  freely  constructed  truth.  But  now, 
once  more,  whence  this  perfect  adjustment  of  subject  to  ob- 
ject, of  divine  knowledge  to  divine  truth  ?  Surely  the  an- 
swer must  be :  God's  nature  makes  this  so.  There  is,  then, 
something  to  be  called  God's  Essentia,  or  Wesen,  his 
Godhead,  his  very  being  as  God,  his  absolute  self-control  or 
self-possession,  the  very  fullness  of  his  life  as  the  Absolute 
— there  is  something,  I  say,  of  this  sort,  which  requires  God's 
world  of  truth,  distinct  as  it  is  from  his  knowledge  of  this 
world,  to  be  still  precisely  the  adequate  correspondent  to 
this  his  knowledge  of  it,  as  the  latter  is  the  adequate  cor- 
respondent of  the  former.  Suppose,  if  you  will,  to  make 
this  conception  a  little  clearer,  that  one  conceived  God  as 
being  ignorant  and  as  so  far  like  our  finite  selves.  Well, 
then,  surely  he  would  be,  like  us,  of  limited  Wesen  or 
Essentia.  We  know  little  because  we  are  so  little.  Our 
essence  is  almost  a  naught.  A  stone  or  a  brute  has  still 
less  or  lower  being  than  a  man ;  hence  it  knows  either 
nothing  at  all  or  less  than  a  man.  Just  so  God,  if  he 
were  ignorant  like  us,  would  be  of  an  undivine  (i.  e.,  of 
imperfect)  essence.  It  is  then  hjs  Godhead,  his  perfection, 
his  limitless  wealth  of  nature,  that  merely  expresses  itself 
in  his  omniscience.  He  is  omniscient,  if  you  choose  so 
to  express  the  matter,  for  two  reasons  :  First,  because  his 
divine  nature  or  essence,  of  its  very  fullness,  begets  from  its 
own  heart  that  distinction  between  known  object  and  know- 
ing subject  whereon  the  divine  knowledge  itself  is  based ; 
second,  because,  since  God's  own  nature  or  essence  is  su- 
preme and  limitless,  the  two  members  of  this  derived  an- 
tithesis between  kiiower  and  known,  subject  and  object, 
cannot  themselves  be  limited  with  respect  to  their  own  ful- 
Bllment,  but  must  both,  in  their  completeness,  be  adequate 
to  each  other,  and  so  unlimited. 


276  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

All  this  so  far  appears  and  is  a  revelation  of  the  glory 
of  God.  But  look  still  a  little  closer.  Consider  one  fact 
more.  God's  Essentia  thus  appears  as  what  Plotinus  called 
the  One,  or  the  principle ;  while  that  distinction,  that  dou- 
bleness,  upon  which  God's  knowledge  is  based  appears  to 
our  mystics  to  be  itself  a  secondary  derivative  from  this 
One  principle.  And  here  at  length  we  reach  the  point 
where  the  genuinely  divine  mystery  begins  to  appear,  ac- 
cording to  the  opinion  of  the  speculative  mystics,  as  it  is  in 
itself — not  beyond  or  external  to  the  world  of  knowledge, 
but  within,  and  at  the  heart  of  this  world — not  indeed  as 
any  part  of  this  world,  or  as  any  one  mysterious  object 
there,  but  as  the  root  and  source  of  all  knowledge  and  of 
all  objects. 

For  God's  life  itself,  his  Essentia,  his  oneness  that  is  above 
all  distinctions — this,  you  see,  is  now  the  mystery,  not  for 
us,  but  per  se.  And  it  is  the  mystery  because  it  is  the 
source  of  that  very  distinction  upon  which  the  world  of 
knowledge  rests.  Hence  it  can  itself  never  enter  into  the 
world  of  knowledge,  for  that  world  is  derived  from  it 
Even  the  very  omniscience  of  God  cannot  fathom  this  mys- 
tery, because  this  mystery  is  logically  unfathomable.  Nor 
would  one  really  in  presence  of  this  mystery  even  wish  to 
fathom  it  or  treat  it  as  a  limitation  to  knowledge,  for  you 
are  limited  by  unknown  objects  within  the  world  of  con- 
ceivable knowledge.  But  the  source  of  the  very  world  of 
knowledge  is  itself  no  object  in  that  world.  The  divine 
knowledge  is  by  the  very  power  of  the  divine  essence  limit- 
less as  to  all  logically  possible  objects  of  knowledge ;  but  just 
for  that  very  reason  this  limitless  knowledge,  expressing  it- 
self through  the  distinction  between  knower  and  known,  and 
so  presupposing  and  depending  upon  this  distinction,  never 
gets  as  its  own  explicit  object  the  divine  essentia,  in  so  far 
as  the  latter  is  source  and  foundation  of  the  distinction  upon 
which  this  very  limitlessness  of  God's  knowledge  depends. 


MEISTER  ECKHART.  277 

The  One,  the  principle  of  the  distinction,  the  source  of 
God's  omniscience,  is  deeper  than  the  distinction,  and  so 
than  the  divine  omniscience  itself.  If  by  truth  you  mean 
an  object  of  knowledge,  then  the  Godhead,  as  such,  is  the 
source  of  the  world  of  truth,  and  so  never  becomes  any 
part  of  the  world  of  truth,  which  at  best  is  the  result  and 
not  the  inclusive  container  of  God's  essence.  Thus  indeed 
the  heaven  of  heavens — yes,  the  very  wealth  of  the  divine 
Word  itself — cannot  contain  the  Godhead.  And  omnis- 
cience itself  presupposes,  implies,  involves,  is  based  upon 
mystery. 

I  have  kept  so  far  fairly  close  to  the  relatively  Christian 
categories  of  mystics  such  as  Eckhart.  Eckhart  himself  is 
never  weary  of  going  over  and  over  this  paradox  of  mys- 
tery in  knowledge.  The  aforesaid  remark  about  the  angels 
was,  to  be  sure,  an  assertion  that  moves  altogether  within 
the  orthodox  range  of  St  Thomas's  own  opinion.*  But 
Eckhart  far  exceeds  such  expressions  whenever  he  lets 
himself  go  free  in  the  use  of  the  mystical  speech.  "  I  say," 
so  runs  his  word,f  "  who  thinks  of  anything  in  God  and 
names  it  with  any  name,  that  is  not  God.  God  [i.  e.,  here 
the  essential  Godhead]  is  above  name  and  above  nature 
[i.  e.,  above  all  derived  distinctions,  even  the  highest].  We 
read  of  a  good  man  who  prayed  God  in  his  prayer,  and 
would  give  him  a  name.  Then  spake  a  brother :  4  Be  still, 
thou  debasest  God '  ['  Swig,  du  underest  Got']."  Even  this, 
to  be  sure,  is  still  somewhat  extravagantly  paradoxically 
phrased  Thomism.  But  Eckhart  goes  still  further :  "  In  the 
naked  Godhead,"  he  elsewhere  says,  t  "  there  was  never  form 

*  See  Summ.  Theol.  Quest,  xii,  art  vii,  Corpus  :  "  Quod  comprehendere 
Deum  imposrtibile  est  cuicumque  intellectui  create."  (Yet  some  created  be- 
ings know,  although  they  cannot  comprehend,  God  in  his  essence.)  On  the 
other  hand,  Thomas,  as  Aristotelian,  attributes  to  God  complete  self-knowl- 
edge, and  so  would  reject  Eckbart'a  absolute  mystery  of  the  Godhead. 

t  Pfeiffer,  p.  92.  J  Pfeifler,  p.  468. 


278  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

nor  idea."  The  essential  Godhead  is  often  described  as 
wordless  (ungewortet),  *  or  by  similar  epithets,  where  Eck- 
hart  means  by  Wort  the  derived  word,  the  world  of  Ideas, 
the  Son,  who  is  indeed  from  eternity,  but  who  is  just  the 
derived.  The  Neo-Platonic  and  Dionysian  expressions 
about  the  divine  Nothingness,  as  expressing  the  exaltation 
of  the  divine  essence  above  every  "  iht " — i.  e.,  above  every 
even  conceivable  object  that  has  predicates — are  favorite  ex- 
pressions with  Eckhart  himself.  "  God  is  nameless,  for  of 
him  none  can  speak  or  understand.  Therefore  a  heathen 
master  says  :  Whatever  we  understand  or  assert  of  the  First 
Cause  that  we  ourselves  are,  rather  than  is  the  First  Cause 
any  of  these  things ;  for  it  is  beyond  all  speech  and  under- 
standing. If  I  say  God  is  good,  it  is  not  true.  Rather,  I 
am  good,  God  is  not  good.  .  .  .  What  is  good,  that  can  grow 
better ;  what  can  grow  better,  can  grow  best.  Now  God  is 
not  good,  and  therefore  it  is  that  he  cannot  grow  better ; 
and  since  he  cannot  grow  better,  he  cannot  grow  best ;  for 
these  three  things  [good,  better,  best]  are  far  from  God,  for  he 
is  above  all.  .  .  .  Therefore  be  still,  and  prate  not  of  God — 
for  with  whatsoever  speech  you  prate  concerning  him  you 
lie  and  commit  sin.  .  .  .  What,  then,  shall  I  do  ?  You  shall 
always  sink  away  from  your  selfhood,  you  shall  flow  into 
his  self-possession,  and  your  very  thought  of  Yours  shall  flow 
into  his  Mine,  and  become  there  his  Mine  so  completely  that 
you  with  him  eternally  apprehend  his  birth  less  fullness  of 
being  and  his  nameless  nothingness."  t  The  original  here, 
as  often  in  its  rugged  skill,  defies  translation. 

But  yet  further :  Eckhart  takes  up  an  older  and  much 
discussed  scholastic  terminology,  which  St.  Thomas  himself 

*  Pfeiffer,  p.  319. 

t  Loc.  cit.,  p.  319  :  Du  solt  alzemale  entsinken  diner  dinesheit,  unde  solt 
zerfliezen  in  sine  sinesheit,  unde  sol  din  din  in  sinem  min  ein  min  werden 
also  genzlich,  dass  du  mit  ihm  verstandest  ^wigliche  sine  ungewordene 
iatigkeit  und  sine  ungenannten  Nihtheit 


MEISTEE  ECKHART.  279 

had,  on  the  whole,  either  carefully  avoided  or  very  skil- 
fully modified,  but  which  Eckhart  uses  freely.  Our  mystic, 
namely,  is  fond  of  making  the  already  indicated  technical 
distinction  between  God  as  the  developed  Trinity  and  the 
Godhead  as  the  Essence  or  Wesen  proper,  a  distinction  of 
central  importance  in  his  doctrine.  Sometimes,  to  be  sure, 
he  uses  the  words  God  and  Godhead  interchangeably.  But 
whenever  he  wishes  to  be  especially  exact  he  speaks  of  the 
Godhead  as  the  unrelated  One,  the  first  principle,  or,  as  he 
also  calls  it,  the  "  unnatured  nature,"  from  which  God  him- 
self, viz.,  the  Trinity,  as  the  sphere  of  the  divine  power, 
knowledge,  and  love,  is  secondarily  derived.  The  latter,  or 
God  as  the  Trinity,  Eckhart  then  calls  the  "  natured  nature  " 
of  the  divine.  Of  the  divine  persons  as  one  in  essence 
but  distinguished  by  their  mutual  relations  St.  Thomas 
had  elaborately  treated,  and  in  a  great  measure  Eckhart 
follows  the  angelic  doctor's  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  as 
such  in  itself.  But  in  the  mystic's  hands  the  scholastic 
distinction  between  the  divine  essence  and  the  divine  per- 
sons is  fearlessly  exaggerated.  It  was  Thomistic  to  make  the 
generation  of  the  Son  from  the  Father,  a  procession  in  the 
divine  "according  to  the  emanation  of  the  intellect,"  so 
that  the  world  of  the  divine  Wisdom,  or  again  that  realm 
of  Ideas,  before  mentioned,  so  far  as  it  is  viewed,  as  pro- 
ceeding from  the  originating  nature  of  the  Father,  is  the 
Son.  Then  the  Holy  Spirit's  procession  is  the  processio 
aworis,  arising  from  a  relation  of  a  loving,  and  so  volition- 
al, type  between  the  Father  and  the  Son ;  and  thus  the 
scheme  of  the  Trinity  is  complete.  All  this  Eckhart  often 
expounds,  after  Thomas.  But,  as  we  have  now  seen,  the 
very  heart  of  this  speculative  mysticism  lies  in  observing 
that  if,  through  what  is  called  in  Christian  terminology 
the  procession  of  the  Son,  the  divine  omniscience  gets  a 
complete  expression  in  eternal  terms,  still  there  is  even  at 
the  centre  of  this  omniscience  the  necessary  mystery  of  the 


280  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

divine  essence  itself,  which  neither  generates  nor  is  gener- 
ated, and  which  is  yet  the  source  and  fountain  of  all  the 
divine.  Eckhart  is  sure :  If  you  really  want  to  come  into 
communion  with  the  absolute  God,  then  even  the  holy 
Trinity  can  never  suffice  you.  That — the  Trinity — is  the 
revealed  God.  The  mysterious  origin  of  this  revelation — 
well,  that  is  the  Godhead.  Who  stops  short  of  that  knows 
much,  for  he  enters  by  the  grace  of  God  into  the  world  of 
the  revelation  of  God,  where  God  is  omniscient.  But  deeper 
than  God's  omniscience  is  that  which  is  the  source  of  om- 
niscience, the  essentia,  which,  so  far  as  it  is  considered  in 
itself,  apart  from  the  birth  of  the  Word,  is  not  yet  even 
the  Father,  much  less  the  Trinity.  Yet  in  that  Source,  in 
the  Godhead,  all  that  the  Father  begets,  all  that  the  Divine 
Word  reveals,  all  that  the  divine  Love  prizes,  all  that  the 
Trinity  in  its  unity  has  created — all  this  is  eternally  hid- 
den. For  thence — from  that  One,  that  Source — proceeds  in 
eternity  the  relational  distinctions  of  the  Trinity,  in  time 
the  whole  created  world.  Do  you  want  the  reality,  the 
soul  of  things,  the  absolute  truth,  then  you  must  get  past 
God  the  Trinity,  past  the  revealed  God,  past  the  God  with 
whom  in  the  beginning  was  the  Word.  For  that  God  is  in 
his  very  existence  only  a  being  who  is  relative  to  the  objects 
of  his  omniscience.  Yes,  you  can  say,  as  Eckhart  often 
says,  that  just  as  the  Father  were  not,  in  case  there  were 
not  also  the  Son,  so  God  would  not  be  were  there  not  the 
world  of  God's  ideas.  In  God  as  the  Trinity,  in  the  re- 
vealed, in  the  omniscient  God,  all  exists  only  relatively, 
not  absolutely :  the  Father  exists  as  related  to  the  Son, 
both  exist  as  related  to  the  Spirit ;  knowledge  and  its  object 
are  relative ;  yes,  even  the  ideas  of  the  created  things  are, 
in  God,  just  as  real  as  he  is  himself.  Had  not  God  thought 
of  me,  he  would  not  have  been  God ;  so  I  am  in  a  sense 
cause  of  him  as  much  as  he  is  cause  of  me.  For  God,  as  a 
relative  term,  is  relative  also  to  even  the  creatures.  But  the 


MEISTER  ECKHART.  281 

Godhead — that  is  the  source  of  sources — that  is  above  all  re- 
lations. And  our  true  divine  home  is  there,  and  there  only, 
viz.,  in  union  with  the  incomprehensible  depth  of  the  God- 
head. God,  says  Eckhart,  becomes  and  fades  away,  although 
not  temporally.  Only  the  Godhead  has  fullness  of  being. 

"  When,"  says  Eckhart,  speaking  in  a  sermon  of  this 
difference  between  absolute  and  relative  being — "  when  I 
stood  in  the  depth,  on  the  ground,  in  the  fountain  and 
source  of  the  Godhead,  no  one  asked  me  what  I  would  or 
what  I  did.  There  was  no  one  who  should  ask  me.  But 
when  I  issued  forth — then  all  creatures,  speaking,  said : 
4  God  ! '  If  one  asked  me :  '  Brother  Eckhart,  when  did 
you  go  out  of  the  house  ? '  I  should  say :  '  I  must  have 
been  in  it'  Well,  just  so  all  creatures  speak  of  God."  [I.  e., 
God  is  a  term  relative  to  the  term  creature.]  "  But  why  do 
they  [the  creatures]  not  speak  of  the  Godhead  ?  All  that 
which  is  in  the  Godhead — that  is  One,  and  thereof  is  not  to 
be  spoken.  God  acts.  The  Godhead  does  not  act  It  has 
nothing  to  do.  There  is  no  deed  in  the  Godhead.  Never 
did  it  look  upon  deed.  God  and  Godhead  differ  as  deed 
and  non-deed.  When  again  I  come  into  God,  if  I  form  no 
image,  my  re  winning  [of  the  Godhead]  is  nobler  than  was 
my  issuing  forth.  I  alone  [viz.,  as  thinking  being  in  this 
world,  conceiving  of  the  true  natures  of  created  things] 
bring  all  creatures  from  their  own  reason  into  my  reason, 
so  that  in  me  [i.  e.,  in  my  conception]  they  become  one. 
When  I  come  to  the  depth,  to  the  ground,  to  the  fountain 
and  the  source  of  the  Godhead,  no  one  will  ask  me  whence 
I  come,  or  where  I  have  been.  No  one  had  missed  me  when 
I  vanished  thence." 

And  hereupon,  in  this  sermon,  Eckhart,  to  whom  all 
this  has  an  intensely  practical  significance,  closes  with  the 
following  characteristic  speech  :  "  Whoever  has  understood 
this  sermon,  I  wish  him  well  of  it  If  nobody  had  been 
here  then  I  still  must  have  preached  it — to  this  stick.  There 


282  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

are  some  poor  folk  who  go  home  again  and  say  :  I  will  sit 
in  one  place  and  eat  my  bread  and  serve  God.  I  say  by 
the  truth,  such  people  must  remain  in  darkness,  nor  ever 
win  or  conquer  what  those  others  win  who  follow  God  in 
poverty  and  in  want.  Amen."  But  of  this  practical  aspect 
further  in  a  moment  It  is  enough  so  far  to  see  that,  as 
Eckhart  says  in  another  sermon :  "  When  a  man  turns 
from  himself  and  from  all  created  things,"  .  .  .  then  the 
central  light,  or,  as  Eckhart  loves  to  call  it,  the  "  Spark,"  or 
"  Glimmer  "  of  his  soul,  the  highest  form  of  rationality,  the 
creative  reason  of  Aristotle,  "takes  no  contentment  in 
Father,  or  Son,  or  Holy  Ghost,  nor  in  the  three  persons,  so 
far  as  each  subsists  in  its  own  character.  ...  I  will  say 
still  more,"  he  goes  on.  "  This  lighttakes  no  contentment  in 
the  simple  movelessness  of  the  divine  essence,  that  neither 
gives  nor  desires.  But  it  longs  to  know  whence  comes  this 
essence  ?  It  wants  to  go  into  the  unity  that  is  in  the 
depths,  into  the  still  wilderness,  where  never  was  seen 
difference,  neither  Father,  nor  Son,  nor  Holy  Ghost ;  in  that 
absorption,  where  there  is  no  one  at  home,  there  the  Spark 
of  the  soul  is  content  in  the  light,  and  there  is  it  at  peace 
more  than  in  itself.  For  this  depth  is  a  simple  stillness, 
that  in  itself  is  moveless ;  but  from  this  movelessness  all 
things  are  moved,  and  all  things  have  their  life  that  live  in 
reason  and  possess  themselves.  That  we  may  thus  live  in 
reason,  may  God  help  us.  Amen." 

You  have  now  before  you  the  speculative  basis  of  Eck- 
hart's  mysticism.  Apart  from  the  specifically  Christian 
and  scholastic  terminology,  the  central  thoughts  are  simply 
these :  (1)  The  world  of  explicit  being  or  of  interrelated 
being,  both  finite  and  infinite,  is  a  spiritual,  an  ideal  world, 
where  all  objects  are  what  they  are  only  for  a  certain  om- 
niscient Subject,  the  Self  of  this  world  of  truth.  Hence 
there  is  indeed  no  unknowable  object;  and  this  divine 
Self  is  so  far  omniscient  (2)  But  what  even  the  knowledge 


MEISTER  ECKHART.  283 

of  this  omniscient  Self  cannot  word,  or  voice  forth,  or  have 
for  its  own  object,  that  is  precisely  the  very  selfhood,  the 
highest  nature  or  inner  source  of  the  divine  Self  in  its  own 
unity.  Self-knowledge  is  notoriously  a  problematic  thing. 
Well,  this  mysticism  consists  in  saying  that  all  the  knowl- 
edge of  even  a  divine  Self  is  rooted  in  the  impenetrable 
mystery  of  the  existence,  the  nature,  the  inmost  essence,  of 
its  own  Selfhood.  Whoever  still  obstinately  and  with 
divine  love  of  the  highest  seeks  to  know  this,  must  first  lay 
aside  the  very  conditions  of  knowledge,  and  pass  into  the 
still  wilderness,  where  there  is  no  longer  either  subject  or 
object  But  to  do  this  is  to  reach  the  light  above  the  light 
—is  to  touch  the  Absolute,  and  so  to  be  in  unity,  and  at 
peace,  in  the  wilderness  where  no  one  is  at  home  but  the 
Godhead,  and  where  even  that  is  nothing  determinate,  and 
is  yet  the  fountain  of  all  things  and  determinations. 

Now  I  have  said  that  this  sort  of  mysticism  is  something 
historically  well  and  often  known.  As  a  fact,  you  can  find  in 
some  of  the  posthumously  published  lectures  of  Fichte  (e.  g., 
the  Wissenschaftslehre  of  1804)  almost  the  same  essential 
thoughts  as  those  at  the  basis  of  Eck hart's  sermons, expounded 
upon  the  foundation  of  a  post- Kantian  idealism,  by  a  man 
who  himself  revolted  from  many  of  the  practical  conse- 
quences of  mysticism,  who  was  far  from  pushing  it  to  such 
consequences  as  Eckhart's,  and  who  was  as  ignorant  of 
Eck  hart  as  he  was  of  the  Catholic  middle  ages  in  general. 
In  the  other  direction,  if  you  pass  backwards  from  Eckhart, 
past  Dionysius,  past  Plotinus,  far  beyond  and  before  the 
Christian  era,  you  find,  as  I  have  already  said,  in  the  very 
dawn  of  Hindoo  thought,  in  the  Upanishads,  the  same 
problem,  with  the  same  elements.  There  is,  of  course,  no 
trace  there  present  as  yet  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity; 
but  already  one  conceives  the  world  as  the  world  of  the 
absolute  Self.  And  in  a  famous  legend,  a  sage,  Yajna- 
valkya,  addressing  his  wife,  Maitreyi,  concerning  imuior- 


284  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

tality,  reasons  that  while  we  can  attain  to  immortality  by 
union  with  this  absolute  Self,  still  we  must  not  think  of 
this  absolute  Self  as  itself  the  prey  of  mere  consciousness. 
And  the  sage  reasons  substantially  thus :  Here,  in  this  life, 
one  sees — another,  one  hears — another,  one  touches,  smells, 
tastes — another — yes,  one  greets,  thinks,  knows — another. 
That  is  consciousness.  That  is  explicit  knowledge.  That, 
he  apparently  intends  to  suggest,  might  so  far  be  conceived 
as  extended  to  omniscience  without  essential  change.  But 
thus  knowing  subject  and  known  object  remain  forever 
apart ;  and  therefore  such  knowledge  would  not  yet  be 
union  with  the  real  Self.  For,  he  goes  on,  if  all  had  become 
to  one  the  Self,  "  Wherewith  and  whom  should  he  then 
see  ?  Wherewith  and  whom  should  he  then  hear,  smell, 
touch,  taste  ?  Wherewith  and  whom  should  he  then 
greet  ? "  ["  Da  fragete  mich  nieman,"  says  Eckhart,  speak- 
ing of  what  one  finds  in  the  wilderness  of  the  Godhead, 
"  da  enwas  nieman  der  mich  fragete,"  or  again,  "  There  was 
no  one  at  home  "].  "  Wherewith,"  continues  Yajnavalkya — 
"  wherewith  and  what  should  he  then  think  ?  Wherewith 
and  what  should  he  then  know  ?  Wherewith  should  he 
know  him  through  whom  he  knows  all  things  ?  Where- 
with, O  Beloved,  should  he  know  the  Knower  ? " 

In  this  mystic  land,  as  you  see,  all  roads  lead  to  the 
same  eternal  city,  this  conceived  refuge  of  the  ages,  yet  a 
city  that,  alas,  as  Eckhart  tells  us,  is  after  all  the  place  da 
nieman  heime  ist.  Beyond  eternity  it  shall  lie — but  the 
way  of  glory  is  to  be  also  the  way  of  darkness. 

So  much  then  for  the  speculative  aspect  of  our  mystic's 
thought.  You  may  see  now  something  of  the  magnitude  of 
the  motives  that  have  led  human  thought  again  and  again 
into  this  region,  where  the  profoundest  thinking  comes  at 
times  so  close  to  a  pathological  love  for  a  merely  passive 
rapture  of  inexpressible  feelings.  But  in  any  case,  I  am 
not  here  to  criticise  or  to  reconstruct ;  but  to  portray.  You 


MEISTER  ECKHART.  285 

will  be  anxious  to  pass  before  we  cloge  to  the  practical 
aspect.  Eckhart,  who  taught  thus,  expressing  Catholic 
ideas  in  a  form  obviously  so  full  of  danger  to  his  orthodoxy 
— why  did  he  suppose  that  the  people  could  possibly  need  to 
hear  such  things  in  their  own  vernacular  ?  And  how  did 
he  escape  that  danger  of  the  merely  passive  rapture  ? 

in. 

Practically  regarded,  a  mystic,  as  a  public  teacher,  has 
in  general  two  especially  valuable  characteristics  :  First, 
he  is  a  man  who  believes  himself  to  have  faced  absolute 
issues,  and  to  have  discovered  absolute  values.  Hence  he 
is  not  easily  dismayed  when  he  faces  any  lesser  human 
problem.  Suppose  that  there  is  something  called  union 
with  God,  which  involves  rising  above  the  sphere  within 
which  even  the  assumed  and  unquestioned  dogma  of  the 
Trinity  is  instructive.  Then  surely,  if  one  knows  the  way 
to  this  union,  or  towards  it,  one  who  has  in  a  measure  tran- 
scended even  the  dogma  of  his  infallible  Church,  is  not 
likely  to  speak  with  an  uncertain  sound  when  he  has  to 
face  the  lesser  problems  of  faith  or  of  life.  The  little  ones 
of  his  flock  come  to  him  with  their  sins.  He  says,  Turn  to 
God.  There  alone  is  peace.  Forsake  yourself.  It  is  in 
your  separation  from  God  that  lies  the  essence  of  sin.  Turn 
from  the  creature.  Forget  the  creature.  There  is  but  one 
good.  There  are  not  many  ways  to  peace.  There  is  one 
way.  That  is  absolute  surrender  of  all  good  but  God. 
Others  in  our  preacher's  flock  boast  of  their  good  works. 
Eckhart  despises  good  works,  unless— here  is  his  often 
repeated  formula— unless  not  the  righteous  man,  but  only 
God  in  him,  does  these  works— i.  e.,  they  must  be  done 
without  self-consciousness,  without  thought  of  merit,  as 
the  mere  overflow  of  love  and  peace.  Your  righteousness 
must  issue,  like  the  Trinity,  from  the  very  Godhead 
itself;  else  all  your  striving  is  in  vain.  Or  the  afflicted 


286  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

in  the  flock  lament  their  woes.  Death  and  pain  have 
come  into  their  lives.  They  grieve  and  cannot  be  com- 
forted. That,  says  Eckhart,  is  because  you  love  creatures. 
Why  do  you  not  love  God  alone  ?  There  is  no  thing 
good  but  God.  That  is  what  sorrow  teaches  you.  Hence 
sorrow  is  not  to  be  lamented,  but  is  to  be  prized.  Do  not 
think  of  your  woes  as  a  punishment,  but  as  a  call  from  God, 
a  call  to  go  home  to  his  peace.  From  this  point  of  view 
grief  is  itself  something  divine.  "  I  say  that  after  God 
there  was  never  anything  that  is  nobler  than  sorrow.  For 
had  there  been  anything  nobler  than  sorrow,  then  surely 
the  Father  from  heaven  would  have  granted  that  nobler 
gift  to  his  son,  Jesus  Christ.  But  we  find  that,  except  for 
his  humanity,  there  was  nothing  of  which  Christ  had  so 
much  of  as  sorrow.  .  .  .  Yes,  I  say,  too,  that  were  there  any- 
thing nobler  than  sorrow,  then  therewith  would  God  have 
redeemed  man.  .  .  .  But  we  do  not  find  that  Christ  was  ever 
an  hour  upon  earth  without  sorrow  ;  therefore  sorrow  must 
be  above  all  things."*  The  doctrine,  you  see,  is  not  alto- 
gether new,  but  the  absoluteness  of  the  tone — this  is  one 
special  privilege  of  the  mystic. 

The  second  general  advantage  of  the  mystic  as  a  public 
teacher  is  that  he  speaks  always  upon  that  basis  of  direct 
experience  of  which  we  have  already  made  mention.  Other 
men  are  dependent  upon  their  traditions,  or  their  abstract 
formulas.  The  essence  of  the  mystical  doctrine  is  the 
recognition  that  all  abstract  formulas  must  fail  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  highest  truth,  whose  own  innermost  nature  it  is 
to  be  absolutely  simple,  and  yet  beyond  words.  Hence 
only  religious  experience  can  really  touch  this  truth. 
Argument,  tradition,  authority — all  these  fail.  When  that 
which  is  perfect  comes,  that  which  is  in  part  is  to  be  taken 

*  Pages  337,  388.  The  suggested  variation  of  the  doctrine  of  the  atone- 
ment is  itself  characteristic  of  Eckhart 's  type  of  mysticism. 


MEISTER  ECKHART.  287 

away.  And  the  perfect,  according  to  the  mystic,  is  reached 
as  soon  as  you  abstract  from  all  that  is  derived  or  explicit, 
and  return  to  the  depth,  to  the  source,  to  the  fountain  of 
the  Godhead.  But  that  you  apprehend  only  by  an  act  of 
inward  surrender  to  the  divine  presence  and  absoluteness. 
Other  men  hear  of  God,  read  about  God,  believe  in  God, 
serve  God.  The  mystic,  in  so  far  as  he  speaks  with  author- 
ity, declares  that  he  has  in  some  measure  attained  God. 

Hence  it  is  that  Eckhart,  like  other  mystics,  speaks 
always  with  the  simple  confidence  of  the  man  for  whom 
there  are  no  alternatives.  It  is  so.  This  he  sees.  He  has 
no  doubt.  To  his  followers  (as  the  scribe  of  one  of  the 
manuscripts  of  his  sermons  phfases  it)  he  appears  as 
"Meister  Eckhart,  dem  Got  nie  niht  verbarc."  For  the 
mystic  this  sort  of  assertion  involves  no  vain  pretense,  no 
unseemly  pride.  Of  himself  as  this  man  the  mystic  makes 
no  account  But  the  simple  revelation  of  God's  unity  and 
consequent  absolute  mystery — has  not  one  the  right  to 
voice  this  revelation  ?  And  if  in  this  revelation  lies  the 
whole  secret  of  man's  salvation,  and  one  has  experienced 
that  fact,  must  not  one  say  so  ? 

These  two  advantages — (1)  the  fearlessness  in  the  pres- 
ence of  all  the  lesser  issues  of  life,  because  one  has  faced 
once  for  all  the  central  issue ;  and  (2)  that  assurance  of 
one's  doctrine  which  is  derived  from  the  fact  that  all  this  is 
a  fresh  report  of  one's  own  religious  experience— these  two 
advantages,  I  say,  Eckhart  shares  with  many  mystics.  But 
now,  as  the  readers  of  mystical  literature  well  know,  the 
practical  danger,  yes,  the  curse,  of  the  doctrine,  as  taught 
by  many  mystics,  lies  in  that  often  fairly  pathological 
tendency  towards  dreamily  passive  emotions,  and  so  to- 
wards what  is  well  called  Quietism.  If  God's  central 
Wesen  is  thus  a  voiceless  mystery,  a  wilderness  of  un- 
utterable Being,  and  if  the  highest  union  with  God  means 
an  absorption  in  the  presence  of  this  mystery— well,  then, 
20 


288  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AXD  EVIL. 

is  not  the  best,  even  in  this  life,  a  deedlessly  passive  and 
unspeakable  rapture  in  God,  a  doing  of  nothing,  a  fasci- 
nated gazing  towards  the  exalted  Essence,  which  is  to 
ordinary  thought  a  mere  Nothing,  but  that  to  the  mystic  is 
his  All  ?  To  many  mystics  this  indeed  has  seemed  the 
whole  solution.  But  is  this  so  with  Eckhart  ? 

In  answer  to  this  question  it  must  first  be  distinctly 
said  that  Eckhart  is  no  quietist.  I  have  spoken  of  his 
manly  temper,  of  his  rugged  plainness  of  mood  and  man- 
ner. This  man,  so  long  as  he  is  in  this  world,  simply 
means  business,  viz.,  his  life's  business.  Union  with  God 
is  indeed  his  whole  aim.  But  first  he  remembers  that  you 
cannot  come  into  union  with  God  until  after  you  have 
learned  to  put  off  the  creature,  the  world.  Now  you  do  not 
put  off  the  world  by  pretending,  in  your  private  rapture,  to 
have  sentimentally  forgotten  it.  You  must,  by  the  power 
of  God,  have  overcome  it ;  and  overcoming  is  a  matter  of 
many  years  of  growth,  growth  which  Eckhart  conceives  as 
lying  in  a  marvellously  original  combination  of  spiritual 
freedom  and  of  rigid  self -discipline.  It  is  hard  to  sketch  the 
precise  picture  of  the  true  spiritual  life  as  Eckhart  presents 
it  in  his  sermons,  because  the  elements  involved  are  so 
many.  But  still  I  can  suggest  a  few  things. 

At  all  events,  bear  in  mind  that  the  soul  of  man, 
for  Eckhart,  has  various  higher  and  lower  powers,  or 
faculties,  of  which,  of  course,  the  intellect  and  the  will 
are  the  most  significant.  These  special  powers  do  their 
work,  and  must  continue  to  do  their  work,  so  long  as  we 
are  in  the  body.  What  joins,  or  may  in  the  end  join  the 
soul  to  God,  is,  however,  no  one  of  these  powers,  but  the 
aforesaid  Spark  or  Glimmer  of  the  soul,  the  Fiinkelin  or 
Ganster,  of  which  Eckhart  often  speaks.  This,  I  say,  is  no 
power  of  the  soul,  though  it  is  meant  to  correspond  to 
Aristotle's  Creative  Reason.  It  is  the  uncreated  essence 
of  our  created  soul.  Now  this  Fiinkelin  Eckhart  con- 


MEISTER  ECKHART.  289 

ceives  as  something  eternal  and  immortal,  which  has  an 
inscrutable  but  real  relation  to  the  essence  of  the  God- 
head. This  Spark  of  the  divine  light  it  is  in  us  which 
makes  us  eternally  discontented  with  all  but  the  Godhead, 
so  that  whatever  we  know  or  do,  it  is  all  naught  to  us 
whilst  we  still  find  ourselves  out  of  union  with  God's 
essence.  And  so  far  you  have  the  psychological  basis  of 
our  human  longing  for  salvation. 

Now  the  soul's  destiny  it  is  to  lay  aside,  in  the  higher 
life,  all  but  this  Spark  of  light,  and  by  virtue  of  the  Spark 
to  be  united  to  the  Godhead.  But  next  observe  carefully, 
Eckhart  never  conceives  that  union  with  the  Godhead  as 
any  utter  absorption,  wherein  our  individuality  is  to  be 
really  and  substantially  lost  Could  the  soul  ever  come  to 
comprehend  God's  essence  completely,  then  indeed  it 
would  be  utterly  absorbed  into  God,  and  would  so  become 
nothing  but  God.  But,  as  a  fact,  except  in  a  consciously 
hyperbolic  speech,  Eckhart  never  conceives  the  union  of 
the  soul  with  God  as  a  process  to  be  finally  completed. 
Eckhart  believes  in  individual  immortality,  and  this  he 
explicitly  maintains.  I  said  earlier  that  Eckhart  held 
man's  salvation  to  be  dependent  upon  the  very  recognition 
that  the  divine  essence  involves  an  impenetrable  mystery. 
How  true  this  is  you  will  perhaps  now  for  the  first  time 
appreciate  when  I  say  that  upon  this  very  mysteriousness 
of  God's  own  essence  Eckhart,  in  a  striking  passage,  founds 
his  assertion  that  the  union  of  our  individual  Spark  of 
light  witli  the  Godhead  can  never  be  completed,  and  founds 
also  his  consequent  affirmation  of  the  immortality  of  the 
individual.  Speaking  of  the  state  of  the  blessed,  Eckhart 
says :  *  "In  the  exalted  state  the  soul  has  lost  itself,  and 
flows  all  flowing  into  the  unity  of  the  divine  essence. 
But,  '  Ah ! '  one  might  ask,  '  How  is  it  with  the  soul  thus 

*  Pfeiffer,  p.  887. 


290  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

lost,  does  it  find  itself  or  not  ? '  And  I  will  respond  as  it 
seems  to  me,  namely,  that  the  soul  finds  itself  at  the  point 
where  every  rational  being  possesses  itself  in  self -conscious- 
ness. Though  it  sinks  all  sinking  in  the  unity  of  the 
divine  essence,  yet  it  can  never  comprehend  its  own  source. 
And  therefore  God  has  left  it  a  tiny  point  [Pilnct eliri]  where- 
with it  returns  again  into  itself,  and  knows  itself  to  be  a 
creature.  And  that  is  most  of  all  the  soul's  essence,  that 
she  can  never  comprehend  thoroughly  her  own  Creator." 

Here  then  already  you  see  why  Eckhart's  mysticism, 
quite  unlike  that  of  the  Hindoos,  knows  of  the  absorption  in 
the  Absolute  only  as  something  wholly  relative  to  the  pre- 
served subsistence  of  the  essence  of  the  individual  soul. 
And  here  you  also  see  why  he  cannot  become  and  remain  a 
quietist.  For  a  quietistic  mystic,  as  such,  simply  ignores 
the  individual.  But  Eckhart  maintains  individuality.  The 
Spark  or  Filnkelin  of  the  soul  is  itself  something  uncreated, 
and  capable  of  the  deepest  and  most  mysterious  union  with 
the  divine  Essentia.  But  the  created  individual,  shadowy 
as  his  creature  existence  in  itself  is,  still  accompanies,  even 
through  the  ages  of  ages,  this  endless  process  of  the  union 
with  the  divine.  Or,  in  other  words,  Eckhart  means  the  indi- 
vidual soul  to  be  absorbed  by  virtue  of  a  self -surrender  in  the 
divine — i.  e.,  in  the  contemplation  of  the  Godhead — but  never 
to  be  absorbed  into  the  divine.  Or,  again,  to  try  a  familiar 
metaphor  not  used  by  Eckhart :  Whatever  you  will,  de- 
sire, know,  think,  or  aim  to  possess,  all  that  in  the  end,  if 
you  are  saved,  turns  out  to  be,  according  to  Eckhart's  doc-- 
trine,  nothing  but  the  Godhead  itself,  towards  which,  as  the 
absolute  haven,  all  the  winds  of  eternity  are  even  now 
wafting  the  ship  of  your  soul.  But  in  that  haven  your 
bark  will  still  float  in  the  waters  of  mystery  and  peace — yes, 
and  will  eternally  sail  onwards,  like  a  ship  piloted  forever 
through  the  landlocked  fiords  of  some  now  far-off  region  of 
sky-piercing  mountains.  The  mountains  and  the  dark  wa- 


MEISTER  ECKHART.  291 

ters  of  the  longed-for  homeland  will  indeed  be  all  in  all ; 
but  the  little  ship  will  still  sail  on  these  waves  of  eternity, 
sustained  and  moved  forever  in  an  unresting  peace  amidst 
the  mountains  of  God. 

Now  here  also  appears  another  aspect  of  what  is  the 
most  important  practical  feature  in  Eckhart's  teachings. 
You  have  often  seen  in  the  foregoing  how,  like  mystics  in 
general,  he  loves  what  one  might  call  a  nihilistic  phrase- 
ology. The  Godhead,  as  above  all  distinctions  is,  he  has 
told  us,  in  a  sense  Nothing.  It  is  equally  true  to  say,  in 
our  stammering  human  speech,  that  it  is  the  creature 
that  is  absolutely  nothing,  while  God  alone  is  the  true 
"  Iht"  And  this  also  Eckhart  says  in  countless  places. 
God  then  may  be  indifferently  said  to  possess,  as  we  have 
seen,  " ungewordene  latigkeit"  or  " ungenannte  Nihtheit" 
unborn  reality,  or  nameless  nothingness.  Now  the  note- 
worthy thing  about  all  such  nihilistic  phraseology  is  that 
it  is  explicitly  founded  upon  the  purely  relative  character 
of  all  our  human  conceptions  and  speech.  We  live  in  con- 
trasts, in  relations,  in  a  consciousness  of  light  and  shade. 
Hence  our  every  effort  to  express  our  relation  to  the  simple 
and  ultimate  mystery  involves  a  duplicity  of  terms,  and  in 
fact  of  mental  attitudes.  But  this,  I  say,  is  itself  a  matter 
of  intensely  practical  import.  Just  as  you  cannot  be  in 
union  with  God,  unless,  in  the  very  union,  you  remain  you, 
just  so  your  passivity,  your  self-surrender,  your  willing 
nothingness,  when  you  are  absorbed  in  God,  is  something 
that  has  also  a  very  positive  aspect.  Unless  your  soul  had 
its  special  powers  in  addition  to  that  central  Spark  already 
mentioned — well,  then,  you  could  not  surrender  these 
powers.  Master  Eckhart.  when  did  you  go  out  of  the 
house  1  "Do  was  ich  darin."  " I  must  have  been  in  the 
house."  Well,  just  so,  your  absolute  surrender  to  God,  not 
only  in  its  beginning,  but  also  in  its  continuance,  means 
that  you  in  a  sense  keep  your  lower  self  in  order  endlessly 


292  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

to  surrender  it.  But  this  does  not  mean  quietism  ;  it  means 
activity.  In  this  life,  at  all  events,  the  surrender  to  God  is 
for  Eckhart  always  as  much  a  positive  as  a  negative  pro- 
cess. Begin  anywhere  you  please.  Say,  "  I  as  creature  am 
nothing.  I  must  forsake  myself."  What  hereupon  hap- 
pens ?  Escape  implies  first  control.  You  must  bind  the 
strong  man  of  your  lower  nature  or  you  cannot  spoil  his 
house.  Hence  Eckhart  condemns  all  the  "  wild  "  mysticism 
of  his  time,  all  merely  antinomian  tendencies.  Your  early 
training  as  mystic  must  mean  self-control,  such  as  the 
monks  practise.  And  self-control  means  once  more  a  pro- 
saic business,  which  the  love  of  God  inspires,  but  which 
only  minute  daily  discipline  can  accomplish.* 

On  the  other  hand,  this  daily  discipline  is  itself  only 
valuable  in  so  far  as  it  contributes  to  spiritual  freedom. 
There  must  be  an  absolute  union  of  spirituality  and  of 
daily  activity.  Eckhart  has  a  manly  contempt  for  all  that 
is  merely  external,  for  mere  penances,  for  formal  good 
works  as  such,  for  all  slavery  to  forms.  All  these  external 
things  are  but  means  to  ends.  Not  even  vows  need  bind 
the  free  soul  that  once  finds  its  former  vows,  in  case  they 
are  not,  like  the  marriage  vow,  public  obligations,  but  are, 
like  vows  of  penance,  or  of  similar  spiritual  exercises,  pri- 
vate affairs — in  case,  I  say,  the  soul  finds  such  vows  to  be 
a  hindrance  to  the  higher  life,  t  The  one  rule  is :  Take  the 
nearest  way  Godwards,  but  be  always  sure  to  keep  in  mo- 
tion on  that  way,  until  God's  rest  comes  of  itself. 

This  preparatory  self -discipline  once  in  a  measure  ful- 
filled, and  the  next  stage  of  piety  reached,  then  what  is  for 
Eckhart  the  deep  paradox  of  the  spiritual  life  first  really 
begins.  Here  is  the  soul  in  the  body — a  soul  which  has  at 
its  centre  that  uncreated  Spark,  whose  life  it  is  to  rewin 

*  See  especially  the  introduction  to  Sch  wester  Katrei. 
t  Pfeiffer,  p.  23. 


MEISTER  ECKHART.  293 

and  retain  union  with  the  Godhead — but  a  soul  also  which 
has  its  special  powers,  some  of  these  powers  being  spiritual, 
like  intellect  and  will,  some  of  them  bodily,  like  sense  and 
desire.  How,  in  view  of  the  persistent  survival  of  these  lower 
powers,  shall  the  soul  now  find  its  earthly  life  ordered  ?  The 
situation  is  one  of  infinite  complexity.  Does  the  soul  look 
Godwards,  then  that  way  lies  a  peace  to  be  won,  not  by 
means  of  the  life  of  the  soul's  special  powers,  but  only 
through  the  virtue  which  Eckhart  calls  Abgescheidenheit, 
"  departedness  "  of  soul — absolute  freedom  from  the  bond- 
age of  the  creature,  rest  in  God,  patient  waiting  for  him, 
indifference  to  earthly  fortune — a  curious  union  of  im- 
movable stoicism  in  the  presence  of  the  finite,  and  of  pas- 
sionate love  for  the  infinite.*  Abgescheidenheit  is  the 
special  virtue  related  to  the  centre  or  Spark  of  the  soul. 
As  so  related  it  is  a  virtue  higher  even  than  charity.  The 
man  who  has  it  is  so  far  above  not  merely  ill  fortune,  but 
even  repentance  for  his  past  sins.  He  sees  all  as  God's  will. 
The  Godhead  is  all  in  all  to  him,  and  the  peace  that  passeth 
understanding.  Is  it  God's  will  that  of  old  he  was  a  sinner, 
that  concerns  him  not  now.  Let  God's  will  be  done  in 
heaven  ?  And  it  is  heavenward  only,  to  the  absolute  home 
of  mystery,  that  Abgescheidenheit  looks.  Nothing  is  good 
save  what  is  yonder.  And  now  you  will  say  is  not  this 
once  more  Quietism  ? 

But  no — all  this  is  true,  but  it  is  not  the  whole  story  of 
virtue  upon  this  stage  of  the  religious  life.  Abgescheiden- 
heit does  not  strive  or  cry,  but  it  calmly  and  with  absolute 
assurance,  prays,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  irreversibly 
determines  and  declares  in  its  peace,  that  God's  will  shall 
be  done  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven.  And  "on  earth,'1  in 
the  mystic  language,  means  in  the  world  of  the  soul's  lower 

*  On  Abguchttdenhtit,  of.  especially  the  ninth  Tract  of  Pfeiffer,  pp. 
488-493. 


294  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

powers.  The  lower  powers  continue  here  on  earth,  to  exist 
in  their  shadow  land  of  created  being.  There,  for  instance, 
in  the  finite  world,  is  the  "  outer  man,"  of  whom  Eckhart 
often  speaks.  The  outer  man,  as  creature  of  finitude,  is 
and  must  often  be  visited  by  pain  and  passion.  Herein 
lies  his  very  finitude.  That  indeed  is  his  unalterable  acci- 
dent That  is  his  way — to  be  troubled.  Did  not  Christ, 
who  inwardly  dwelt  in  absolute  divine  peace,  say,  "  My 
soul  is  very  heavy,"  and  "  My  God,  why  has  thou  forsaken 
me  ? "  Christ  said  all  this  in  and  with  the  outer  man. 
Well,  the  outer  man,  as  created  shadow,  defined  through 
his  very  contrast  to  the  divine,  cannot  possess  Abgeschei- 
denheit,  but  must  be  vitalized  by  it,  as  the  body's  members  by 
the  life  of  the  heart.  This  is  the  only  possible  salvation  of 
the  lower  man,  and  so  in  that  lower  world  of  the  spiritual- 
ized materiality  of  the  good  man's  nature  there  is  indeed  no 
quietism,  but  endless  activity,  even  strife.  For  the  inner 
man,  in  his  Abgescheidenheit,  stands  as  a  sort  of  Aristotelian 
unmoved  mover,  beyond  this  tempestuous  sublunary  world 
of  finite  passion,  never,  during  our  earthly  life,  destroying 
but  vitalizing  the  lower  nature.  The  outer  man  has  and  must 
have  temptations,  and  is  better  for  having  them  if  he  only 
overcomes  them.  He  overcomes  them  by  outer  strife ;  but 
the  strife  itself  is  inspired  by  the  moveless  peace  of  the 
inner  man.* 

It  is  with  temptations  as  with  sorrows.  They  are  the 
nobler  incidents  of  the  life  of  the  outer  man,  if  only  the 
inner  man  is  at  peace.  "That  a  man  has  a  restful  and 
peaceful  life  in  God  is  good.  That  a  man  endures  a  pain- 
ful life  with  patience,  that  is  better ;  but  that  man  has  his 
rest  in  the  midst  of  a  painful  life,  that  is  best  of  all."  t  And 

*  Cf.  Pfeiffer,  p.  551,  tq. 

t  Pfeifter,  p.  221.  On  the  whole  relation  of  higher  and  lower,  inner  and 
outer  nature,  and  on  the  whole  doctrine  of  good  works,  cf.  especially  Sernion 
III,  Pfeiffer,  pp.  16-24,  and  the  passages  pp.  34,  35,  50-58, 188,  856,  607,  609. 


MEISTER  ECKHART.  295 

therefore  whoever  as  observer  of  the  good  man  views  from 
without  the  soul  thus  constituted,  such  an  outer  observer 
sees  in  general — for  such  is  Eckhart's  usual  thought — a 
person  who  appears  to  be  not  at  all  an  ecstatic  quietist, 
but  a  strenuous,  busy,  virile,  essentially  practical  being — 
a  man  of  hard  sense,  fearless  of  speech,  vigorous  •  in  main- 
taining his  cause,  indifferent  to  the  mere  form  of  good 
works,  little  disposed  to  fasting,  to  going  barefoot,  or  to  the 
other  non-essentials  of  the  religious  life,  much  disposed  to 
helping  the  brethren.  "  You  should  remember,"  says  Eck- 
hart  in  one  passage,*  addressing  the  formal  penitents  who 
are  proud  of  their  own  private  good  works,  and  who  are  de- 
voted to  petting  and  to  admiring  the  personal  beauty  of  their 
own  pious  plumage — "you  should  remember  that  God  is 
the  common  Saviour  of  all  mankind,  and  that  much  more 
thanks  are  due  to  him  therefore  than  would  be  due  if  he 
had  only  undertaken  to  save  you.  And  so  you  ought  to 
try  to  be  a  common  saviour  also."  Nor  need  the  man  of 
the  higher  life  despise  even  the  creature  enjoyments,  so  far 
as  they  nourish  his  outer  man.  The  good  man  honors  all 
created  things  when  he  uses  them  by  transforming  their 
lower  forms  into  the  higher  form  of  his  own  nature.  The 
good  men  ought  thus  to  help  all  lower  creatures  back  to 
God,  namely,  by  subordinating  them  to  his  lower,  and  so 
to  his  higher  needs. t  To  be  sure  the  perfect  man  prefers 
in  general  poverty,  but  he  would  be  indifferent  if  God  sent 
his  outer  man  even  wealth  and  pleasure.  He  leaves  in 
general  the  matters  of  fortune  to  God. 

But  if  this  inspiration  of  the  strenuous  outer  man  by 
the  passionless  peace  of  the  moveless  inner  man  is,  so  far 
as  this  world  is  concerned,  the  ideal,  it  must  be  remembered. 


•  Pfeiffer,  p.  561. 

t  For  thin  frequent  thought  of  Eckharf*,  Me  especially  Pfeiffer,  pp. 
ISO,  18*,  851,  474. 


296  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AXD  EVIL. 

on  the  other  hand,  that  the  union  in  question  is  something 
essentially  miraculous — the  gift  of  God.  Our  striving  may 
prepare  the  way  for  it,  and  without  preparatory  discipline 
and  slow  growth  it  comes  not.  But  the  victory  is  the  gift 
of  God.  Hence,  as  I  said  before,  a  good  man's  works  are 
not  the  direct  result  of  his  own  will,  but  of  God's  power. 
Our  will  surrenders  itself,  then  God  acts  on  us. 

Yet  God  has  countless  gifts.  He  might  choose,  even  in 
this  world,  to  grant  the  peculiar  grace  of  mystic  ecstasy  it- 
self. If  he  does  so  you  can  but  accept  it.  In  ecstasy  the 
outer  man,  to  be  sure,  does  fall  quite  away,  and  no  good 
works  are  done.  As  a  fact,  however,  nobody  has  the  power 
directly  to  produce  the  ecstatic  experience  by  any  effort.  If 
God  gives  this  his  highest  earthly  revelation  of  his  perfect 
peace,  he  himself  undertakes  the  responsibility  for  the  good 
works  that  are  neglected  while  the  outer  man  is  silent. 
Hence  the  recognition  of  the  existence  of  the  mystic  ecstasy 
does  not  make  Eckhart  a  practical  quietist.  Ecstasy  is  like 
the  heavenly  state,  something  beyond  this  life,  such  as  came 
to  St.  Paul. 

Of  a  typical  ecstatic  mystic  Eckhart  has  given  an  ac- 
count in  his  marvellous  tract,  half-true  portrayal  of  some 
real  person  or  persons,  half-free  poetical  invention,  called 
Schwester  Katrei.  Schwester  Katrei  is  a  religious  woman, 
although  apparently  not  a  woman  of  a  regular  order. 
She  is  turned  to  the  higher  life  by  her  confessor  (who  repre- 
sents Eckhart  himself) ;  but  erelong  she  far  transcends  her 
teacher,  rises  superior  to  all  formal  obedience  to  him,  or 
even  to  the  Church,  and  follows  God's  secret  leading  into 
a  life  of  uttermost  unworldliness.  She  at  length  attains  the 
place  where  she  can  say  to  her  confessor,  in  the  fearless 
mystic  speech  :  "  Rejoice  with  me,  for  I  have  become  God." 
She,  after  years  of  merciless  self-discipline  and  of  saintly 
living,  reporting  her  highest  experience,  can  declare,  in  the 
words  of  typical  ecstasy:  "I  have  with  angels  and  with 


MEISTER  ECKHART.  297 

saints  nothing  to  do,  nor  aught  to  do  with  any  creature, 
nor  with  anything  that  has  been  created  .  .  .  nay,  nor 
with  anything  that  has  ever  been  conceived  in  words. 
...  I  have  been  confirmed  in  the  naked  Godhead, 
where  never  was  form  or  idea  .  .  .  Where  I  stand  no 
creature  may  come  in  created  fashion  ...  I  am  where  I 
was  before  I  was  created.  There  is  but  God  and  only  God. 
There  are  neither  angels  nor  saints  nor  choirs  nor  heavens. 
Many  tell  of  eight  heavens  and  nine  choirs.  There  is  noth- 
ing of  the  sort  where  I  am.  You  must  know  how  all  that 
one  conceives  thus  in  words  and  pictures  thus  to  the  people 
is  but  a  hint  to  stimulate  towards  God.  But  in  God  there 
is  naught  but  God,  and  no  soul  can  come  to  God  unless  he 
becomes  God  as  God  was  before  the  soul's  creation."  Yet 
Schwester  Katrei,  speaking  at  last  as  inspired  wise  woman 
to  her  now  humbled  and  receptive  confessor,  who  asks 
whether  he  too  can  come  to  such  union  with  God,  says 
plainly  to  him :  "  Ir  sit  ungetempert  dar  zuo.''  (For  this 
you  are  not  tempered).  The  way  is  long,  she  says.  You 
must  first  learn  not  only  to  ascend  but  to  descend  the  mys- 
tic road,  year  after  year,  till  you  know  both  the  way  and  the 
heavenly  company  of  the  Trinity  and  the  lonely  place  of 
peace,  as  a  man  knows  his  own  courtyard.  Then  only  can 
you  finally  remain  at  the  threshold  of  the  Godhead.  This 
is  not  an  affair  of  mere  feelings,  but  of  deeds,  of  grace,  and 
of  slowly  won  nearness  to  God.  Till  you  have  won  all  that 
you  must  cultivate  your  lower  powers,  take  due  pleasure  in 
created  things,  and  wait  God's  time. 

And  thus  you  see  something  of  the  fashion  in  which 
Eckhart  conceives  the  unity  of  the  Christian  life,  and  the 
race  that  one  must  run  toward  the  mystical  glory. 


XI. 

AN  EPISODE   OF  EARLY  CALIFORNIA    LIFE: 

THE   SQUATTER   RIOT  OF  1850  IN 

SACRAMENTO. 

PRELIMINARY  NOTE. 

THE  following  paper  was  first  prepared  as  a  contribution 
to  local  history,  and  was  addressed  to  an  audience  familiar 
with  the  traditions  of  the  early  days  of  California.  The 
text  still  retains  forms  of  speech  due  to  this  origin.  The 
author  here  often  speaks  as  a  Californian  to  his  fellows, 
refers  freely  to  local  issues,  and  presupposes  an  interest  in  a 
special  region  and  group  of  people. 

Yet  if  the  affair  here  in  question  is  one  of  local  history, 
the  passions,  the  social  forces,  and  the  essential  ideas  con- 
cerned, are  of  permanent  significance.  How  often,  even  in 
some  of  our  latest  American  conflicts,  at  Homestead,  at 
Chicago,  or  at  Hazletown,  can  we  not  recognize  the  same 
essential  motives  that  were  at  work  in  the  affair  here  de- 
scribed ?  A  lofty  and  abstract  idealism,  such  as,  despite 
the  opinions  of  foreigners,  is  a  permanent  and  potent  force 
in  our  American  life,  appears,  then,  in  this  little  story,  as 
coming  into  contact  with  a  very  concrete  problem  of  social 
existence — a  problem  about  land  ownership,  about  the 
rights  and  privileges  of  poor  men,  and  about  the  good  order 
of  a  new  community.  The  Transcendentalist — a  being  who 
is,  in  one  form,  a  characteristic  American — imagines  him- 

298 


AN  EPISODE  OP  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.     299 

self  called  upon  to  lead  his  fellows  in  a  struggle  for  prop- 
erty and  for  bread.  The  Idealist  gets  into  conflict  with  the 
sheriff;  the  Higher  Law  has  to  face  the  processes  of  the 
courts  ;  a  company  of  homeless  wanderers  have  to  solve,  in 
a  moment,  a  critical  problem  of  civilization.  The  philoso- 
pher (who  is  here  also  a  man  of  the  people)  pretends,  for 
the  passing  hour,  to  be.  by  popular  choice,  the  king ;  and  a 
crowd  of  men,  who  know  not  precisely  what  they  mean,  are 
forced  to  decide  whether  or  no  to  follow  this  new  king. 
Such  incidents  may  well  be  studied  in  miniature  as  on  a 
grand  scale.  They  may  seem  petty,  local,  transient,  acci- 
dental, but  their  meaning  is  permanent,  and  they  will  re- 
cur, over  and  over,  and  perhaps  on  a  constantly  grander 
and  grander  scale,  as  long  as  our  national  history  lasts.  In 
miniature  we  have  then,  in  this  case,  a  process  of  universal 
meaning. 

As  an  example  of  the  way  in  which  the  solution  of  the 
most  practical  problems  of  the  daily  life  of  a  community 
may  involve  the  ultimate  issues  of  an  idealistic  philosophy, 
the  present  Study  of  Good  and  Evil  seems  to  me  to  have  its 
place  in  this  volume.  And  I  have  deliberately  left  its 
locally  determined  form  essentially  unchanged. 

The  most  general  outlines  of  early  Californian  history 
are  very  commonly  known,  and  may  here  be,  for  the  most 
part,  presupposed.  California,  acquired  by  the  United 
States  during  the  Mexican  War,  had  long  been  under  the 
irregular  government  characteristic  of  a  remote  and 
sparsely  settled  Spanish-American  province.  Land  owner- 
ship, at  the  time  of  our  conquest  of  the  country,  was  legal- 
ly founded  upon  Grants,  which  the  various  governments  of 
the  province  had,  from  time  to  time,  made  to  settlers. 
These  "Spanish  Grants,"  frequently  in  the  region  near  the 
coast,  both  in  the  central  and  in  the  southern  parts  of 
California,  did  not  extend  (except  in  a  single  instanco), 
into  the  mountain  regions  where,  in  1848  and  later,  the 


300  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

great  gold  discoveries  were  made.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
portions  of  California  nearer  the  coast,  where  the  large 
towns  soon  grew  up,  and  where  the  commercial  interests  of 
the  new  State,  during  the  gold  period,  were  principally 
centred,  were  especially  affected  by  the  controversies  which 
soon  began  concerning  the  validity  of  the  land-titles  of 
Mexican  origin.  By  the  treaty  of  1848,  between  Mexico 
and  the  United  States,  the  general  validity  of  all  such 
titles  was  guaranteed.  On  the  other  hand,  the  precise  defi- 
nition of  individual  titles  was  often  doubtful ;  their  authen- 
ticity could  easily  be  questioned  by  unsympathetic  stran- 
gers, unused  to  the  simple  provincial  ways  of  a  Spanish- 
American  community ;  and  the  rude  surveys  through 
which,  in  some  cases,  their  supposed  boundaries  had  been 
determined,  had  sometimes  been  carried  out  in  a  most 
primitive  fashion.  Such  titles  needed  a  very  considerate 
treatment,  if  they  were  to  be  recognized  at  all. 

But  the  American  newcomers  were,  in  a  goodly  pro- 
portion of  cases,  men  from  the  regions  of  our  Middle  West, 
where  land  ownership  had  very  generally  been  determined 
either  directly  by  settlement,  or  through  conformity  to  easily 
comprehensible  general  laws.  The  Oregon  wilderness, 
from  which  some  of  the  newcomers  came  to  California, 
was  similarly  the  natural  paradise  of  the  "  squatter."  In  con- 
sequence, the  settlers  in  California  were  ill-prepared  to  be  pa- 
tient with  the  Calif ornian  laws,  and  with  mysterious  sources 
of  land  ownership.  To  add  to  the  confusion  of  men's  ideas, 
the  lands  of  the  gold  region  were,  in  general,  actually  free 
to  all ;  for  they  were,  on  the  whole,  untouched  by  the  Grants. 
They  were  therefore  now  public  lands  of  the  United 
States.  The  National  Government  refused,  for  years,  to  part 
with  the  title,  or  to  survey  the  gold-producing  lands,  and 
thus  left  the  whole  question  of  the  practical  ownership  of 
claims  to  be  determined,  so  far  as  mining  was  concerned, 
by  the  local  "  Miners'  Custom  "  of  each  district.  The  result 


AN  EPISODE  OP  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.    301 

was,  for  California  miners,  a  system  of  temporary  land  own- 
ership, determined  by  the  actual  occupancy  and  use  of  the 
land  itself,  the  limits  of  such  occupancy  being  subject  to 
local  regulation  by  miners'  meetings.  The  contrast  between 
this  simple  and  practical  system  of  the  mining  districts, 
and  the  complex  and  mysterious  problems  of  land  owner- 
ship in  the  large  commercial  towns  and  in  the  coast  regions, 
was  especially  vexatious  for  those  who,  in  the  course  of  their 
business,  needed  land  in  the  portion  of  the  State  covered 
by  the  Grants,  and  who  could  not  get  such  land  by  the  pro- 
cess with  which  the  mining  life,  as  well  as  the  customs 
common  to  all  squatters,  had  familiarized  them. 

Social  unrest  and  discontent  immediately  resulted.  The 
remoter  consequences,  however,  have  been  very  far-reach- 
ing. The  agrarian  theories  of  Mr.  Henry  George  (to  men- 
tion one  instance  only)  form  a  striking  example  of  the  later 
outcome,  in  certain  minds,  of  this  early  Californian  experi- 
ence. The  ideal  of  land  ownership  which  Mr.  George  de- 
fends is  simply  the  ideal  suggested  by  the  miners'  methods 
in  the  gold  districts  of  California.  The  ideal  which  he 
combats  is  the  ideal  of  whose  difficulties  the  weary  history 
of  the  early  litigation  over  the  "Spanish  Grants"  in  Cali- 
fornia was  a  peculiarly  tragic  example. 

The  present  paper,  in  dealing  with  a  single  incident  of 
the  early  struggle,  is  led  to  study,  however,  not  so  much  the 
special  problem  as  to  the  best  form  of  land  ownership,  as 
the  still  more  universal  question  of  the  conflict  between  ab- 
stract ideas  and  social  authority,  at  a  moment  when  the 
order  of  a  new  society,  and  the  eternal  conflict  between  the 
private  and  the  universal  Selves,  had  to  be  settled,  for  the 
time,  by  men  of  energy,  of  idealistic  temper,  and  of  very 
fallible  intelligence,  just  as  we  to-day  have,  as  men  and  as 
citizens,  to  solve  our  own  analogous  problems. 

That  the  issues  of  the  passing  moment  are  also  the  issues 
of  metaphysics,  and  that  the  eternal  problems  are  met  with 


302  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

in  the  midst  of  the  temporal,  is  the  familiar  lesson  for  the 
sake  of  which  I  have  ventured  to  introduce  this  paper  into 
the  present  series. 

So  much  by  way  of  preliminary.  Now  follows  the  origi- 
nal discussion. 

A  prominent  California  pioneer,  Doctor  Stillman,  pub- 
lished in  the  Overland  Monthly  for  November,  1873,  as  one 
of  the  chapters  of  his  since  well-known  book  called  Seeking 
the  Golden  Fleece,  a  contemporary  record  of  his  experiences 
at  the  time  of  the  Squatter  Riot  of  1850  in  Sacramento.  In 
a  note  to  this  valuable  reminiscence,  Doctor  Stillman  re- 
marked that  no  detailed  account  of  the  remarkable  affair 
had  ever  been  printed.  So  far  as  I  know,  the  same  thing 
can  still  truthfully  be  said.  But  the  scenes  of  violence  them- 
selves form  but  a  small  part  of  the  real  story  of  the  move- 
ment ;  and  I  shall  venture  in  the  following  to  try  to  present 
a  somewhat  connected  account  of  the  events  that  preceded 
the  riot  and  that  culminated  therein.  I  draw  my  materials 
principally  from  the  contemporary  files  of  the  Placer  Times 
and  the  Sacramento  Transcript;  but  I  shall  also  seek  to 
accomplish  what  has  certainly  so  far  been  neglected — viz., 
to  indicate  the  true  historical  significance  of  this  little  epi- 
sode in  our  pioneer  annals.  For,  as  I  think,  the  impor- 
tance of  the  conflict  was  greater  than  even  the  combatants 
themselves  knew ;  and  most  of  us  are  not  in  a  fair  way  to 
comprehend  the  facts,  unless  we  remind  ourselves  of  a  good 
many  long  since  forgotten  details  of  the  narrative. 


And  now  to  begin  the  story  with  the  moral,  let  us  try 
to  understand  at  once  why  this  episode  should  seem  of  a 
certain  more  general  significance.  That  a  few  lives  should 
be  lost  in  a  squabble  about  land,  is  indeed  a  small  thing  in 
the  history  of  a  State  that  has  seen  so  many  land  quarrels 


AN   EPISODE  OF  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.    303 

as  California.  The  Squatter  Riot  of  1850  was  but  a  prelim- 
inary skirmish,  if  one  will  judge  it  by  the  number  of  killed 
and  wounded,  while  the  history  of  settler  difficulties  in  the 
whole  State,  during  the  thirty-five  years  since,  seems,  by 
comparison  of  number,  a  long  battle,  with  killed  and 
wounded  who  would  need  to  be  counted,  not  by  fives,  but  by 
hundreds. 

Not,  however,  for  the  number  of  lives  lost,  but  for  the  im- 
portance of  just  that  crisis  at  that  moment,  must  we  consid- 
er the  Squatter  Riot  noteworthy.  Just  as  the  death  of  James 
King,  of  William,  by  leading  to  the  formation  of  the  famous 
Vigilance  Committee  of  1856,  happened  to  seem  of  more  im- 
portance to  the  California  community  than  the  death  of 
ninety-and-nine  just  miners  and  other  private  persons, 
who  were  waylaid  or  shot  in  quarrels ;  just  as  that  death 
had  many  times  the  historical  significance  that  it  would 
have  had  if  King  had  been  slain  under  the  most  atrocious 
circumstances  a  few  months  earlier ;  even  so  the  Squatter 
Riot  in  Sacramento  is  significant,  not  because  bloodshed 
was  unknown  elsewhere  in  California  land  quarrels,  but 
because  nowhere  else  did  any  single  land  quarrel  come  so 
near  to  involving  an  organized  effort  to  get  rid,  once  for 
all,  of  the  Spanish  titles  as  evidences  of  property  in  land. 
Elsewhere  and  later,  men  followed  legal  methods,  or  else 
stood  nearly  alone  in  their  fight  Men  regarded  some  one 
title  as  fraudulent,  and  opposed  it ;  or  frankly  avowed  their 
private  hatred  of  all  Mexican  land  titles,  but  were  com- 
paratively isolated  in  their  methods  of  legal  or  illegal  re- 
sistance to  the  enforcement  of  the  vested  rights;  or  they 
were  led  into  lengthy  and  often  murderous  quarrels  by 
almost  hopelessly  involved  problems  of  title,  such  as  so 
long  worried  all  men  alike  in  San  Francisco.  Elsewhere 
than  in  Sacramento  men  thus  tried,  in  dealing  with  numer- 
ous questions  of  detail,  to  resist  the  enforcement  of  indi- 
vidual claims  under  Mexican  titles ;  but  in  Sacramento  in 
21 


304  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

1850  the  popular  opposition  was  deeper,  and  its  chances  of 
a  sweeping  success  were  for  a  moment  far  greater. 

In  form,  to  be  sure,  even  the  Sacramento  squatters,  like  so 
many  successors,  pretended  to  be  doubtful  of  the  legal  va- 
lidity of  Butter's  "  Alvarado  grant,"  and  to  believe  that,  if 
it  were  valid,  the  grant  still  did  not  cover  Sacramento.  But 
this  pretense  was  here  a  very  thin  veil  for  an  undertaking 
that  was  in  its  spirit  and  methods  distinctly  revolutionary. 
The  squatters  of  that  time  and  place  were  well  led,  and  they 
meant  to  do,  and  contemporary  friends  and  foes  knew  that 
they  meant  to  do,  what  would  have  amounted  to  a  deliberate 
abrogation  by  popular  sovereignty,  of  Mexican  grants  as 
such.  Had  they  been  successful,  a  period  of  anarchy  as  to 
land  property  would  probably  have  followed  far  worse  in 
its  consequences  than  that  lamentable  legalized  anarchy 
that  actually  did  for  years  darken  the  land  interests  of  our 
State,  under  the  Land-Law  of  1851.  Bad  as  that  enactment 
proved,  the  squatter  doctrine,  as  preached  in  1850,  came 
near  proving  far  worse.  To  investigate  how  the  people  of 
Sacramento  showed  their  weakness  in  letting  this  crisis 
come  on  as  it  did,  and  their  strength  in  passing  it  when  it 
at  last  had  come  on,  is  to  my  mind,  in  view  of  the  dangers  of 
that  and  of  all  times,  a  most  helpful  exercise  in  social  sci- 
ence ;  since  it  is  such  investigations  that  enable  us  to  dis- 
tinguish the  good  from  the  evil  tendencies  of  the  popular 
mind,  and  to  feel  the  difference  between  healthy  and  dis- 
eased states  of  social  activity.  I  want,  in  short,  to  make 
this  essay  a  study  of  the  social  forces  concerned  in  early 
California  land  difficulties. 

Captain  Augustus  Sutter,  the  famous  Swiss  pioneer, 
whose  name  is  closely  connected  with  the  gold  discoveries 
of  1848,  owned  at  the  time  of  the  conquest,  and,  in  fact,  since 
1841,  eleven  leagues  under  a  grant  from  the  former  Cali- 
fornian  Governor,  Alvarado.  Moreover,  as  is  again  notori- 
ous, Sutter  supposed  himself  to  own  much  more  than  this 


AN  EPISODE  OP  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.    305 

grant  by  virtue  of  promises  made  to  him  by  GoVernor 
Micheltorena,  in  1845.  In  the  latter  supposition  Sutler 
made  a  serious  blunder,  as  was  pointed  out  to  him  in  1858, 
by  the  United  States  Supreme  Court  Micheltorena  had 
made  to  him  no  valid  grant  whatever.  In  1848,  as  soon  as 
the  gold  seekers  began  to  come,  Sutter  began  to  lose  his 
wits.  One  of  the  pioneer  statements  in  Mr.  H.  H.  Ban- 
croft's historical  collection  says  rather  severely  that  the  dis- 
tinguished captain  thenceforth  signed  "  any  paper  that  was 
brought  to  him."  At  all  events,  he  behaved  in  as  unbusi- 
nesslike a  fashion  as  could  well  be  expected,  and  the  result 
was  that  when  his  affairs  came  in  later  years  to  more  com- 
plete settlement,  it  was  found  that  he  had  deeded  away,  not 
merely  more  land  than  he  actually  owned,  but,  if  I  mistake 
not,  more  land  than  even  he  himself  had  supposed  himself 
to  own.  All  this  led  not  only  himself  into  embarrassment, 
but  other  people  with  him  ;  and  to  arrange  with  justice  the 
final  survey  of  his  Alvarado  grant  proved  in  later  years 
one  of  the  most  perplexing  problems  of  the  United  States 
District  and  Supreme  Courts. 

One  part  of  his  land,  however,  seemed  from  the  first 
clearly  and  indisputably  his  own,  to  deed  away  as  he  might 
choose.  That  was  the  land  about  his  own  "  establishment 
at  New  Helvetia."  Here  he  had  built  his  fort,  commanded 
his  laborers,  received  his  guests,  and  raised  his  crops;  and 
here  the  newcomers  of  the  golden  days  found  him,  the 
reputed  possessor  of  the  soil.  That  he  owned  this  land  was, 
in  fact,  by  this  time,  a  matter,  so  to  speak,  of  world- wide 
notoriety.  For  the  young  Fremont's  "  Report,"  which,  in 
various  shapes  and  editions,  had  years  before  become  so 
popular  a  book,  and  which  the  gold-fever  made  more  popu- 
lar than  ever,  had  distinctly  described  Sutter  as  the  notori- 
ous and  indisputable  owner  of  this  tract  of  land  in  1844. 
If  occupancy  without  any  rival  for  a  term  of  yearn 
could  make  the  matter  clear  to  a  newcomer,  Suiter's  tille 


306  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

to  his  "establishment  "  seemed  beyond  shadow.  Moreover, 
the  title  papers  of  the  Alvarado  grant  were  on  record. 
Governor  Alvarado's  authority  to  grant  eleven  leagues  to 
Sutter  was  indubitable,  and  none  the  less  clear  seemed 
the  wording  of  the  grant,  when  it  gave  certain  outer  bound- 
aries within  which  the  tract  granted  was  to  be  sought,  and 
then  denned  the  grant  so  as  to  include  the  "  establishment 
at  New  Helvetia."  Surely,  one  would  say,  no  newcomer 
could  attack  gutter's  right,  save  by  means  of  some  purely 
agrarian  contention.  A  settler  might  demand  that  all 
occupied  land  in  California  should  be  free  to  every  settler, 
and  that  Mexican  land-ownership  should  be  once  for  all 
done  away  with.  But  unless  a  man  did  this,  what  could  he 
say  against  Butter's  title  to  New  Helvetia  ? 

And  so,  when  the  town  of  Sacramento  began  to  grow 
up,  the  people  who  wanted  lots  assented  at  the  outset  to 
Sutter's  claims,  and  recognized  his  title.  That  they  paid 
him  in  all  cases  a  perfectly  fair  equivalent  for  his  land,  I 
venture  not  to  say.  But  from  him  they  got  their  titles,  and 
under  his  Alvarado  grant  they  held  the  lands  on  which  the 
town  grew  up.  Land-holders  under  Sutter  they  were  who 
organized  the  town  government,  and  their  speculation  was 
soon  profitable  enough  to  make  them  quite  anxious  to  keep 
the  rights  that  Sutter  had  sold  them.  The  question,  how- 
ever, quickly  arose,  whether  the  flood  of  the  new  immigra- 
tion would  regard  a  Spanish  land-title  as  a  sufficient  barrier, 
at  which  its  proud  waves  must  be  stayed.  The  first  safety 
of  the  Sutter-title  men  lay  in  the  fact  that  the  mass  of 
the  newcomers  were  gold-seekers,  and  that,  since  Sacra- 
mento was  not  built  on  a  placer  mine,  these  gold-seekers 
were  not  interested  in  despoiling  its  owners.  But  this 
safeguard  could  not  prove  sufficient  very  long.  The  value 
of  land  in  the  vicinity  of  a  thriving  town  must  soon  at- 
tract men  of  small  capital  and  Californian  ambitions 
from  the  hard  work  of  the  placers  ;  and  the  rainy  season 


AN  EPISODE  OP  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.    307 

would,  at  all  events,  soon  crowd  the  town  with  discontented 
idlers. 

Moreover,  the  whole  question  of  California  land-titles 
was  a  critical  one  for  this  new  community.  The  Anglo- 
Saxon  is,  as  we  so  often  hear,  very  land-hungry.  Many  of 
the  newcomers  were  accustomed  to  the  almost  boundless 
freedom  of  Western  squatters ;  the  right  to  squat  on  vacant 
land  had  come  to  seem  to  them  traditional  and  inalienable ; 
they  would  probably  have  expected  to  find  it,  with  a  little 
search,  somewhere  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  or 
among  the  guarantees  of  the  Constitution.  Among  these 
men  some  of  the  more  influential  pioneers  were  strongly 
under  the  influence  of  the  Oregon  tradition.  In  Oregon, 
squatter  sovereignty,  free  and  untrammelled,  had  been  set- 
tling the  land  question,  of  a  newly  occupied  wilderness 
most  happily.  The  temptation  to  apply  these  methods  to 
California  was  very  strong ;  in  fact,  during  the  interreg- 
num after  the  conquest  of  the  Territory  of  California,  and 
before  the  golden  days  began,  the  discontented  American 
settlers  of  the  Sacramento  Valley  and  of  the  Sonoma  region 
had  freely  talked  about  the  vexations  caused  by  these  Mexi- 
can land-titles,  and  had  even  then  begun  to  propose  meth- 
ods of  settling  their  own  troubles.  The  methods  in  ques- 
tion would  ultimately  have  plunged  everybody  into  far 
worse  troubles. 

The  dangerous  and  blind  Americanism  of  some  among 
these  people  is  well  shown  by  discussions  in  the  California 
Star  for  1847  and  1848,  a  paper  which  I  have  been  able  to 
consult  in  Mr.  H.  H.  Bancroft's  file.  There  is,  for  instance, 
a  frequent  correspondent  of  the  Star  in  those  days,  who 
signs  himself  "Paisano.''  Although  I  have  nobody's  au- 
thority for  his  identity.  I  am  sure,  from  plain  internal  evi- 
dence, that  he  is  L.  W.  Hastings,  then  a  very  well-known 
emigrant  leader,  and  the  author  of  a  descriptive  guide  to 
California  and  Oregon.  Hastings  was  a  very  bigoted 


308  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

American,  at  least  in  his  early  days  on  the  Pacific  coast, 
and  his  book  had  filled  many  pages  with  absurd  abuse  of 
native  Californian  people  and  institutions.  Such  a  man  was, 
just  then,  an  unsafe  popular  leader,  although  he  was  a 
lawyer  by  profession,  and  later  did  good  service  in  the  Con- 
stitutional Convention  of  1849.  In  discussing  land-titles, 
in  these  letters  to  the  Star,  "  Paisano "  plainly  shows  the 
cloven  foot.  Let  us  insist  upon  a  Territorial  Legislature  at 
once,  he  says,  in  effect ;  let  us  set  aside  this  nuisance  of 
military  government  by  its  own  consent  if  possible,  and  let 
us  pass  laws  to  settle  forthwith  these  land  difficulties.  All 
these  "  Paisano "  cloaks  under  an  appeal  to  the  military 
government  to  call  such  a  Legislature.  But  the  real  pur- 
pose is  plain.  The  Legislature,  if  then  called,  would  cer- 
tainly have  been  under  the  influence  of  the  squatter-sover- 
eignty tradition  of  Oregon,  since  its  leaders — e.  g.,  Hastings 
himself — would  have  been,  in  many  cases,  Oregon  men.  It 
would,  at  all  events,  have  been  under  purely  American 
influence  ;  it  would  have  despised  the  natives,  who,  in  their 
turn,  fresh  from  the  losses  and  griefs  of  the  conquest, 
would  have  suspected  its  motives,  would  have  been  unable 
to  understand  its  Anglo-Saxon  methods,  and  would  have 
left  it  to  its  work  of  treating  them  unfairly.  Unjust  land 
laws  would  have  been  passed,  infringements  on  vested  rights 
would  have  been  inevitable,  and  in  after  time  appeals  to 
the  United  States  authority,  together  with  the  coming  of 
the  new  immigration,  would  have  involved  all  in  a  fearful 
chaos,  which  we  may  shudder  to  contemplate  even  in  fancy. 
Yet  "  Paisano  "  did  not  stand  alone  among  the  pioneers  of 
the  interregnum  in  his  desires  and  in  his  plans.  That  such 
plans  made  no  appearance  in  the  Constitutional  Conven- 
tion of  1849  is  due  to  the  wholly  changed  situation  of  the 
moment,  and  to  the  pressing  business  before  the  Con- 
vention. 

But  if  things  appeared  thus  to  the  comparatively  small 


AN  EPISODE  OF  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.    309 

group  of  Americans  in  the  dawn  of  our  life  here,  even 
before  the  gold  discovery,  how  long  should  this  complex 
spider  web  of  land- titles,  wherewith  a  Californian  custom  or 
caprice  had  covered  a  great  part  of  the  Territory,  outlast  the 
trampling  of  the  busy  newcomers  ?  Who  should  resist  these 
strange  men  ?  The  slowly  moving  processes  of  the  courts — 
how  could  they,  in  time,  check  the  rapacity  of  American 
settlers  before  the  mischief  should  once  for  all  be  done,  and 
the  memory  of  these  land-titles  buried  under  an  almost  uni- 
versal predatory  disregard  of  them,  which  would  make  the 
recovery  of  the  land  by  its  legal  owners  too  expensive  an 
undertaking  to  be  even  thought  of  ?  The  answer  to  this 
question  suggests  at  once  how,  amid  all  the  injustice  of  our 
treatment  of  Californian  land-owners,  our  whole  history 
has  illustrated  the  enormous  vitality  of  formally  lawful 
ownership  in  land.  Yes,  this  delicate  web,  that  our  strength 
could  seemingly  so  easily  have  trampled  out  of  existence 
at  once,  became  soon  an  iron  net.  The  more  we  struggled 
with  it,  the  more  we  became  involved  in  its  meshes.  Infi- 
nitely more  have  we  suffered  in  trying  to  escape  from  it, 
than  we  should  have  suffered  had  we  never  made  a  strug- 
gle. Infinitely  more  sorrow  and  money  and  blood  has  it 
cost  us  to  try  to  get  rid  of  our  old  obligations  to  the  Cali- 
fornian land-owners,  than  it  would  have  cost  us  to  grant 
them  all  their  original  demands,  just  and  unjust,  at  once. 
Doubt,  insecurity,  retarded  progress,  litigation  without  end, 
hatred,  destruction  of  property,  expenditure  of  money, 
bloodshed :  all  these  have  resulted  for  us  from  the  fact 
that  we  tried  as  much  as  we  did  to  defraud  these  Calif or- 
nians  of  the  rights  which  we  guaranteed  to  them  at  the  mo- 
ment of  the  conquest  And  in  the  end,  with  all  our  toil, 
we  escaped  not  from  the  net,  and  it  binds  our  land-seekers 
still.  But  how  all  this  wonder  came  about  is  a  long  story, 
indeed,  whereof  the  squatter  riot  of  1850  forms  but  a  small 
part 


310  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

At  all  events,  however,  the  critical  character  of  the 
situation  of  Californian  land-owners  at  the  moment  of  the 
coming  of  the  gold-seekers  appears  plain.  That  all  the 
rights  of  the  Californians  should  ultimately  be  respected 
was,  indeed,  in  view  of  our  rapacious  Anglo-Saxon  land- 
hunger,  and  of  our  national  bigotry  in  dealing  with  Span- 
ish-Americans, impossible.  But  there  were  still  two  courses 
that  our  population  might  take  with  regard  to  the  land. 
One  would  be  the  just-mentioned  simple  plan  of  a  universal 
squatters'  conspiracy.  Had  we  agreed  to  disregard  the 
land-titles  by  a  sort  of  popular  fiat,  then,  ere  the  courts 
could  be  appealed  to  and  the  method  of  settling  the  land- 
titles  ordained  by  Congress,  the  disregard  of  the  claims  of 
the  natives  might  have  gone  so  far  in  many  places  as  to 
render  any  general  restitution  too  expensive  a  luxury  to  be 
profitable.  This  procedure  would  have  been  analogous  to 
that  fashion  of  dealing  with  Indian  reservations  to  which 
our  honest  settlers  have  frequently  resorted.  Atrociously 
wicked  as  such  a  conspiracy  would  have  been,  we  ourselves, 
as  has  been  suggested  above,  should  have  been  in  the  long- 
run  the  greatest  sufferers,  because  the  conspiracy  could  not 
have  been  successful  enough  to  preserve  us  from  fearful  con- 
fusion of  titles  from  litigation  and  warfare  without  end. 
Yet  this  course,  as  we  shall  see,  was  practically  the  course 
proposed  by  the  Sacramento  squatters  of  1850,  and  for  a 
time  the  balance  hesitated  between  the  choice  of  this  and  of 
the  other  course.  The  other  course  we  actually  adopted, 
and  it  was  indeed  the  one  peculiarly  fitted  to  express  just 
our  national  meanness  and  love  of  good  order  in  one. 
This  was  the  plan  of  legal  recognition  and  equally  legal 
spoliation  of  the  Californians ;  a  plan  for  which,  indeed, 
no  one  man  is  responsible,  since  the  cooperation  of  the 
community  at  large  was  needed,  and  obtained  to  make  the 
Land- Act  of  1851  an  instrument  for  evil  and  not  for  good. 
The  devil's  instrument  it  actually  proved  to  be,  by  our 


AN  EPISODE  OP  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.     31 1 

friendly  cooperation,  and  we  have  got  our  full  share  of  the 
devil's  wages  of  trouble  for  our  ready  use  of  it  But  bad  as 
this  second  course  was,  it  was  far  better  than  the  first,  as  in 
general  the  meanness  and  good  order  of  an  Anglo-Saxon 
community  of  money-seekers  produce  better  results  than 
the  bolder  rapacity  and  less  legal  brutality  of  certain  other 
conquering  and  overbearing  races. 

This  struggle,  then,  resulting  in  the  triumph  of  good 
order  over  anarchy,  we  are  here  to  follow  in  a  particular 
instance.  The  legalized  meanness  that  was  to  take  the 
place  of  open  rebellion  disappears  in  the  background,  as 
we  examine  the  immediate  incidents  of  the  struggle,  and 
we  almost  forget  what  was  to  follow,  in  our  interest  in  the 
moment.  Let  us  rejoice  as  we  can  in  an  incident  that 
shows  us  what,  amid  all  our  folly  and  weakness,  is  the  real 
strength  of  our  national  character,  and  the  real  ground  for 
trust  in  its  higher  future  development 

II. 

In  the  winter  of  1849-'50,  that  winter  of  tedium,  of  rain, 
of  mud,  and  of  flood,  the  trouble  began.  The  only  con- 
temporary record  tliat  I  know  bearing  upon  this  contro- 
versy in  that  time,  I  did  not  mention  above,  because  it  is 
so  brief  and  imperfect.  Bayard  Taylor,  then  travelling  as 
correspondent  for  the  New  York  Tribune,  had  his  attention 
attracted  by  the  meetings  of  malcontents  on  the  banks  of 
the  Sacramento.  They  were  landless  men,  and  they  could 
not  see  why.  These  people,  Taylor  tells  us,*  "  were  located 
on  the  vacant  lots  which  had  been  surveyed  by  the  original 
owners  of  the  town,  and  were  by  them  sold  to  others.  The 
emigrants,  who  supposed  that  the  land  belonged  of  right  to 
the  United  States,  boldly  declared  their  intention  of  retain- 

*  Bayard  Taylor,  Eldorado  (in  hU  Works,  Household  Edition),  chap, 
javi,  p.  279. 


312  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

ing  possession  of  it.  Each  man  voted  himself  a  lot,  defying 
the  threats  and  remonstrances  of  the  rightful  owners.  The 
town  was  greatly  agitated  for  a  time  by  these  disputes; 
meetings  were  held  by  both  parties,  and  the  spirit  of  hos- 
tility ran  to  high  pitch.  At  the  time  of  my  leaving  the 
country,  the  matter  was  still  unsettled  ;  but  the  flood  which 
occurred  soon  after,  by  sweeping  both  squatters  and  specu- 
lators off  the  ground,  balanced  accounts  and  left  the  field 
clear  for  a  new  start." 

The  papers  of  the  following  spring  and  summer  refer  a 
few  times  to  these  meetings.  Taylor  was  wrong  in  suppos- 
ing that  the  affair  was  to  be  ended  in  any  fashion  by  the 
flood.  More  water  does  not  make  an  Anglo-Saxon  want 
less  land,  and  this  flood  of  1850  itself  formed  a  curious 
part  of  the  squatter's  pretended  chain  of  argument  a  little 
later,  as  we  shall  see.  Much  more  efficacious  in  tempora- 
rily quelling  the  anger  of  the  landless  men  was  the  happy 
but  deceitful  beginning  of  the  spring  of  1850.  Early  fair 
weather  sent  hundreds  to  the  mines,  and  put  everybody 
into  temporary  good  humor.  Arguments  gave  place  to 
hopes,  and  the  landless  men  hunted  in  the  mountains  for 
the  gold  that  Providence  had  deposited  for  the  sake  of  fill- 
ing just  their  pockets. 

The  intentions  of  Providence  included,  however,  some 
late  rains  that  spring.  The  streams  would  not  fall,  mining 
was  delayed,  provisions  were  exhausted  in  some  of  the 
mining  eamps,  and  a  good  many  of  the  landless  men  went 
back  to  that  city  where  they  owned  no  land,  abandoning 
their  destined  fortunes  in  the  mountains,  and  turning  their 
attention  afresh  to  those  ever-charming  questions  about  the 
inalienable  rights  of  men  to  a  jolly  time  and  a  bit  of  land. 
And  then  the  trouble  began  to  gather  in  earnest ;  although, 
to  be  sure,  in  that  busy  society  it  occupied  a  great  place  in 
the  public  attention  only  by  fits  and  starts.  The  growth  of 
the  evil  seems  to  have  been  steadier  than  the  popular  notion 


AN  EPISODE  OF  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.     313 

of  its  character  and  magnitude.  But  let  us  turn  for  an 
instant  to  glance  at  the  general  social  condition  of  the  city 
that  was  to  pass  through  this  trial. 

The  Sacramento  Transcript,  in  its  early  numbers  in 
the  spring  of  1850,  well  expresses  the  cheerful  side  of  the 
whole  life  of  the  early  days.  The  New  California  world  is 
so  full  of  wonders,  and  the  soul  of  the  brave  man  is  so  full 
of  youth  and  hope !  Mr.  F.  C.  Ewer,  the  joint  editor 
with  Mr.  G.  Kenyon  Fitch,  is  a  person  of  just  the  sort  to 
voice  this  spirit  of  audacity,  and  of  delight  in  life.  "  The 
opening  of  a  new  paper,"  he  says  (in  No.  1  of  the  Tran- 
script, April  1,  1850,  absit  omen),  "  is  like  the  planting  of  a 
tree.  The  hopes  of  many  hearts  cluster  around  it  ...  In  the 
covert  of  its  leaves  all  pure  principles  and  high  aims  should 
find  a  home."  As  for  the  city,  he  tells  us  in  the  same  issue, 
everything  is  looking  well  for  its  future.  The  weather  is 
becoming  settled,  business  activity  is  increasing,  substantial 
buildings  are  springing  up,  health  "  reigns  in  our  midst." 
The  news  from  the  mines  is  good.  There  is  Murderers' 
Bar,  for  instance.  Late  reports  make  "  its  richness  truly 
surprising  "  ;  two  ounces  per  day's  work  of  a  man  for  from 
one  hundred  to  one  hundred  and  fifty  workers.  To  be 
sure,  however,  there  has  been  a  great  rise  in  the  water,  and 
a  large  portion  of  those  holding  leads  have  been  obliged 
to  suspend  operations.  But  all  that  is  a  matter  of  time. 
When  one  turns  from  the  contemplation  of  the  mines 
to  the  contemplation  of  the  general  condition  of  the 
country  at  large,  one  is  struck  with  awe ;  for  then  one 
has  to  reflect  on  what  the  great  American  mind  has 
already  done.  "Never  has  a  country  been  more  orderly, 
never  has  property  been  held  more  inviolable,  or  life  more 
sacred,  than  in  California  for  the  last  twelve  or  fourteen 
months."— (Editorial,  April  20.)  "  Is  it  strange,  then,  that 
this  feeling  of  self-reliance  should  be  so  strong  and  broad- 
cast in  the  land  ?  With  a  country  so  rich  in  resources— so 


314  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

blest  in  a  people  to  manage  it — the  future  destiny  of  Cali- 
fornia is  one  of  the  sublimest  subjects  for  contemplation 
that  can  be  presented  to  the  mind/1 — (Id.)  All  this  sub- 
limity is,  of  course,  quite  consistent  with  occasional  items 
about  affrays  and  robberies  of  a  somewhat  primitive  sort 
here  and  there  in  the  sublime  country  ;  but  such  things  do 
not  decrease  one's  rapture.  Surely  "bliss  was  it  in  that 
dawn  to  be  alive,"  and  Mr.  Ewer  and  Mr.  Fitch  were  the 
generous  youth  to  whom  "  to  be  young  was  heaven." 

In  such  a  good  humor  one  finds,  of  course,  time  to  write 
glowing  accounts  of  the  wondrously  good  society  of  Sacra- 
mento, of  the  great  ball  that  those  charming  belles  at- 
tended ;  that  ball  whose  character  was  so  select  that  every 
gentleman  had  to  send  in  beforehand  to  the  committee  his 
application  for  tickets  for  himself  and  for  the  fair  lady 
whom  he  intended  to  take,  and  had  to  buy  a  separate,  pre- 
sumably non-transferable,  ticket  for  her ;  the  ball,  whose 
brilliancy  and  high  character,  when  the  great  evening 
came,  surprised  even  Mr.  Ewer,  in  this  delightful  wilder- 
ness of  the  Sacramento  Valley.  Nor  in  such  a  period  does 
one  forget  the  fine  arts  of  music  and  poetry.  One's  heaven- 
favored  city  is  visited  by  Henri  Herz,  indubitably  the 
greatest  of  living  pianists,  "every  lineament"  of  whose 
face  "  marks  the  genius,"  and  who  is  therefore  comparable 
in  this  respect  to  Daniel  Webster,  to  Keats,  to  Beethoven, 
and  to  Longfellow  (see  the  Transcript  of  April  20).  Herz 
plays  the  sublimest  of  music  to  an  enraptured  audience : 
"The  Last  Rose  of  Summer,"  "The  Carnival  of  Venice," 
and,  greatest  of  all,  his  own  grand  "  Voyage  Musicale," 
actually  a  medley  of  national  songs,  with  passages  of  his 
own  composition,  illustrating  the  Rhine,  the  castles,  the 
sunny  vales  of  Bohemia,  the  Napoleonic  wars,  a  storm  at 
sea,  and  other  similarly  obvious  and  familiar  experiences, 
even  on  unto  his  "  California  Polka,"  wherewith  he  con- 
cludes !  It  is  divine,  this  artistic  experience,  and  the  story 


AN  EPISODE  OP  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.    315 

of  it  fills  columns  of  the  generous  little  paper.  Further- 
more, one  writes  even  sonnets,  and  having  first  printed 
them,  one  later  finds  occasion  to  quote  them  one's  self, 
since,  after  all,  one's  own  newspaper  is  a  good  place  to 
be  quoted  in.  The  intellectual  life  of  Sacramento  is 
thus  at  the  highest  point.  What  shall  such  a  community 
fear? 

As  for  the  Placer  Times,  that  paper,  a  little  later,  calls 
attention  to  the  stability  of  Sacramento  conditions.  San 
Francisco  is  a  restless  place,  but  for  Sacramento,  the  specu- 
lative era  is  past.  Solid  business,  permanent  and  steady 
growth,  now  begin.  All  this,  you  must  remember,  is  in  the 
spring  of  1850.  The  whole  picture  is  really  an  enchanting 
one ;  and  only  a  churl  could  fail  to  feel  a  quickened  pulse- 
throb  when  he  reads  these  generous  and  innocent  outbursts 
of  splendid  courage  in  both  the  newspapers.  Here  are  ener- 
gy, high  aim,  appreciation  of  every  hint  at  things  beautiful 
and  good ;  here  is  every  element  of  promise,  save  any  assur- 
ance of  real  steadfastness  and  wisdom.  Are  these  qualities 
truly  present  ?  For  the  trial  is  coming,  and  by  another  year 
these  two  papers  will  be  as  realistic  and  commonplace  as 
you  please.  Will  their  purposes  and  those  of  the  commu- 
nity gain  in  wisdom  and  in  tried  purity  what  they  must 
lose  of  the  bloom  and  beauty  of  a  childlike  delight  in 

novelty  ? 

ill. 

On  April  23,  1850,  there  appears  in  the  Transcript,  for 
the  first  time,  an  advertisement  that  announces  as  "just 
published,"  and  now  for  sale,  a  "  translation  of  the  papers 
respecting  the  grant  made  by  Governor  Alvarado  to  '  Mr. 
Augustus  Sutter,'  showing  that  said  grant  does  not  extend 
any  further  south  than  the  mouth  of  Feather  River,  and, 
therefore,  of  course,  does  not  embrace  Sacramento  City." 
This  document  could  be  bought  for  fifty  cents.  I  have  never 
seen  the  pamphlet  itself,  which  contained  some  comments 


316  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

that  would  now  have  much  interest ;  but  the  course  of  its 
argument,  at  all  events,  when  taken  together,  with  the 
other  popular  squatter  talk  of  the  time,  is  made  plain  by 
subsequent  discussions  in  the  newspapers.  John  Sutter,  the 
squatters  intend  to  show,  has  no  claim,  save,  of  course,  as 
squatter  himself,  to  the  land  on  which  Sacramento  is  built 
Fremont  found  him  here;  but  then  he  was,  for  all  that, 
just  a  squatter.  For,  behold,  what  becomes  of  his  boasted 
grant,  when  you  turn  a  keen  American  eye  upon  it  ?  In 
the  first  place,  it  is  incomplete,  since  no  evidence  is  pro- 
duced that  the  central  Government  in  Mexico  ever  sanc- 
tioned it.  Furthermore,  it  is  informal,  if  you  will  insist 
upon  legal  technicalities  at  all.  For  we  will  let  land  specu- 
lators have  all  the  law  that  they  want,  if  it  is  law  that  they 
are  talking  about.  The  grant  is  to  "  Mr.  Augustus  Sutter." 
Is  that  the  Sutter  known  to  us  as  the  great  captain  ?  Still 
more,  the  grant  is  within  a  tract  that  is  to  have  Feather 
River  for  its  eastern  boundary.  Is  the  Feather  River  east 
of  Sacramento  ?  Yet  again,  the  grant  is  specially  framed 
to  exclude  land  overflowed  in  winter.  Let  the  land  specu- 
lators, who  were  lately  driven  off  their  precious  possessions 
by  the  flood,  read  and  ponder  this  provision.  Can  you  float 
in  boats  over  a  grant  that  is  carefully  worded  to  exclude 
the  overflowed  tracts  near  the  river  ?  Best  of  all.  however, 
is  the  evidence  of  figures  that  cannot  lie.  Sutter's  grant  is 
not  only  too  informal  and  ill-defined,  but  it  is  also  far  too 
formal  and  well-defined  to  afford  the  speculators  any 
shadow  of  excuse  for  their  claims.  For  the  latitude  of  the 
tract  granted  is  limited  by  the  outside  boundaries,  recorded 
in  the  document.  The  southern  boundary  is,  however,  ex- 
pressly stated  as  latitude  38°  41'  32".  And  this  parallel  is 
some  miles  north  of  the  city,  crossing  the  Sacramento  River, 
in  fact,  not  far  above  its  junction  with  the  Feather.  This  is 
conclusive.  The  inalienable  rights  of  man  are  no  longer 
to  be  resisted  by  means  of  such  a  title  as  this  one.  The 


AN  EPISODE  OP  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.    317 

public  domain  is  free  to  all.  And  Sacramento  is  obviously 
updn  the  public  domain. 

Such  was  the  contention  for  which  this  pamphlet  under- 
took to  state  the  basis.  Many  a  man  has  heard  the  old  story 
repeated  in  lawsuits  occurring  years  after  that  time.  Early 
in  the  seventies  the  California  Supreme  Court  Decisions 
contain  a  settlement  on  appeal  of  a  suit  in  which  the  ap- 
pellant, resisting  a  title  in  the  city  of  Sacramento  derived 
from  the  Sutler  grant,  had  managed  still,  after  all  State  and 
national  decisions,  to  present  as  a  forlorn  hope  the  old  argu- 
ment about  the  latitudes.  The  argument  was,  of  course,  at 
that  date  promptly  rejected  ;  but  one  watches  with  interest 
the  reptilian  tenacity  of  its  venomous  life.  The  whole 
case  had  received,  as  late  as  1864,*  the  honor  of  restatement 
in  the  records  of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court,  by  the 
help  of  Attorney -General  Black,  who  never  missed  an  oppor- 
tunity of  abusing  a  Californian  Land  Grant  title.  The  court, 
indeed,  had  failed  to  recognize  the  force  of  the  argument 

And  yet,  even  in  1850,  this  chain  of  squatter  reasoning 
seems  as  one  reads  it  to  express  rather  a  genuine  American 
humor  than  any  sincere  opinion  of  anybody's.  It  is  so 
plain  that  the  squatter,  annoyed  by  the  show  of  legal  right 
made  by  the  other  side,  has  determined  in  a  fit  of  half- 
amused  vexation  to  give  the  "speculators"  all  the  law 
they  want  "hot  and  heavy."  It  is  so  plain,  too,  that  what 
he  really  means  is  to  assert  his  right  to  make  game  of  any 
Mexican  title,  and  to  take  up  land  wherever  he  wants  it 
For  every  item  of  his  contention  is  a  mere  quibble,  which 
would  have  been  harmless  enough,  no  doubt  in  court  pro- 
ceedings, but  which  at  such  a  moment  when  urged  with  a 
view  to  disturbing  the  public  mind  of  an  established  com- 
munity, could  easily  become  a  very  dangerous  incitement 
to  disorder  and  violence.  Every  Californian  land-title  had, 

•  United  States  Reports,  8  Wallace,  675. 


318  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

of  course,  to  be  interpreted  with  reference  to  the  conditions 
under  which  it  was  given.  Substantial  rights  could  not  be 
left  at  the  mercy  of  quibbles  about  matters  of  detail.  A 
bona  fide  grant  to  Sutter,  intended  to  include  his  "  establish- 
ment at  New  Helvetia,"  could  not  be  ignored  because  its 
boundaries  were  awkwardly  described,  nor  because  a  sur- 
veyor, with  poor  and  primitive  instruments,  had  blundered 
about  the  latitude  both  of  the  northern  and  of  the  southern 
boundary,  after  Butter's  petition  had  described  both  of  them 
with  sufficient  clearness,  by  the  natural  landmarks.  No- 
body, for  instance,  could  have  pretended  that  by  Sutter's 
Buttes,  the  "  Tres  Picas  "  of  the  grant,  must  be  meant  some 
imaginary  point  out  in  the  plains  to  the  north,  merely  be- 
cause the  surveyor,  Vioget,  had  erred  about  the  latitude  of 
the  peaks,  so  that  the  grant  put  them  just  north  of  the  north- 
ern outside  boundary,  while  the  line  of  latitude  named 
for  that  boundary  actually  ran  north  of  those  familiar  land- 
marks themselves.  The  Tres  Picos  formed  an  evidence  of 
the  true  northern  boundary  of  the  tract  in  question,  that 
was  worth  far  more  than  Vioget 's  figures ;  for  the  peaks 
are  visible  and  the  lines  of  latitude  are  "  merely  conven- 
tional signs,"  after  all.  The  figures  did  in  fact  lie,  and 
Vioget  this  time,  so  soon  as  the  trouble  had  begun,  frankly 
confessed  his  old  error  in  an  affidavit  signed  by  him  at  San 
Francisco.  There  had  been  a  constant  error  in  latitude  in 
his  work,  he  averred,  and  by  the  southern  boundary  in  lati- 
tude 38°  41'  32"  he  had  meant  "  the  estimated  latitude  of  a 
point  of  land  on  the  east  bank  of  the  Sacramento  River,  on 
the  high  ground  south  of  the  lagunas,  below  a  town  now 
called  Sutter  and  distant  about  four  and  one  half  miles  in  a 
southerly  direction  from  Sutter's  fort."*  As  for  the  argu- 
ment about  the  exclusion  of  the  overflowed  lands,  that 
capped  the  climax  of  the  squatter  humor.  The  flood  was, 

*  Transcript  for  June  8 ;  see  also  Placer  Times  of  the  same  date. 


AN  EPISODE  OF  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.     319 

indeed,  a  land-speculator  whom  no  one  could  gainsay,  and 
to  its  writ  of  ejectment  nobody  made  successful  resistance. 
But  then,  if  one  calls  his  beloved  tract  of  firm  land  swamp- 
land, because  a  great  flood  has  driven  him  from  it,  one  is 
understood  to  be  amusing  himself  with  hard  words. 

Here,  then,  was  the  outer  armor  in  which  the  squatter 
doctrine  encased  itself.  Its  inner  life  was  a  very  different 
thing.  "  Captain  Sutter,"  said  a  squatter  correspondent  of 
the  Placer  Times,  u  settles  this  question  himself,  by  plainly 
declaring  with  his  own  lips  that  he  has  no  title  to  this 
place,  but  he  hopes  Congress  will  give  him  one."  These 
words  of  the  correspondent  are  false  on  their  face,  but  they 
express  truthfully  enough  the  spirit  of  the  squatter  con- 
tention. Sutter  " has"  indeed,  as  yet  no  patent  from  the 
United  States  and  he  "  hopes  "  that  Congress  will  pass  some 
law  that  will  protect  his  right  to  his  land.  So  much  is  true. 
But  when  a  squatter  interprets  Sutler's  position  as  this  cor- 
respondent does,  he  plainly  means  that  there  are  at  present 
no  legally  valid  Mexican  land-titles  in  the  country,  since 
Congress,  the  representative  of  the  conquering  power,  has 
so  far  passed  no  law  confirming  those  titles.  The  squatter 
wants,  then,  to  make  out  that  Mexican  land-grants,  or  at 
the  very  least,  all  in  any  wise  imperfect  or  informal  grants, 
have  in  some  fashion  lapsed  with  the  conquest ;  and  that  in 
a  proper  legal  sense  the  owners  of  these  grants  are  no  better 
than  squatters  themselves,  unless  Congress  shall  do  what 
they  " hope"  and  shall  pass  some  act  to  give  them  back  the 
land  that  they  used  to  own  before  the  conquest  That  the 
squatters  somehow  held  this  strange  idea  about  the  grants,  is 
to  my  mind  pretty  plain.  The  big  Mexican  grant  was  to 
them  obviously  an  un-American  institution,  a  creation  of  a 
benighted  people.  What  was  the  good  of  the  conquest,  if  it 
did  not  make  our  enlightened  American  ideas  paramount  in 
the  country  f  Unless,  then.  Congress,  by  some  freak,  should 
restore  to  these  rapacious  speculators  their  old  benighted 
22 


320  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

legal  status,  they  would  have  no  land.  Meanwhile,  of 
course,  the  settlers  were  to  be  as  well  off  as  the  others.  So 
their  thoughts  ran. 

Intelligent  men  could  hold  this  view  only  in  case  they 
had  already  deliberately  determined  that  the  new-coming 
population,  as  such,  ought  to  have  the  chief  legal  rights  in 
the  country.  This  view  was,  after  all,  a  very  obvious  one. 
Providence,  you  see,  and  manifest  destiny  were  understood 
in  those  days  to  be  on  our  side,  and  absolutely  opposed  to  the 
base  Mexican.  To  Providence  the  voyagers  on  the  way 
to  California  had  appealed  at  Panama,  when  they  called  on 
General  Persifer  Smith  to  make  his  famous  proclamation 
excluding  foreigners  from  the  Californian  mines.  "  Provi- 
dence," they  in  effect  declared,  "  has  preserved  the  treasures 
of  those  gold-fields  all  through  these  years  of  priestcraft 
and  ignorance  in  California,  for  us  Americans.  Let  the 
Government  protect  us  now."  *  Providence  is  known  to 
be  opposed  to  every  form  of  oppression ;  and  grabbing 
eleven  leagues  of  land  is  a  great  oppression.  And  so  the 
worthlessness  of  Mexican  land-titles  is  evident. 

Of  course  the  squatters  would  have  disclaimed  very 
generally  so  naked  a  statement  as  this  of  their  position. 
But  when  we  read  in  one  squatter's  card  t  that  "  surely  Sut- 
ter's  grant  does  not  entitle  to  a  monopoly  of  all  the  lands 
in  California,  which  were  purchased  by  the  treasure  of  the 
whole  nation,  and  by  no  small  amount  of  the  best  blood 
that  ever  course'd  or  ran  through  American  veins,"  the 
same  writer's  formal  assurance  that  Sutter  ought  to  have  his 
eleven  leagues  whenever  they  can  be  found  and  duly  sur- 
veyed, cannot  blind  us  to  the  true  spirit  of  the  argument. 
What  has  this  "  best  blood  "  to  do  with  the  Sutter  grant  ? 
The  connection  in  the  writer's  mind  is  only  too  obvious. 

*  See  the  Panama  Star,  in  the  early  part  of  1849. 
t  Transcript,  June  21, 1850. 


AN  EPISODE  OP  EARLY  CALIFORNIA   LIFE.    321 

He  means  that  the  "  best  blood  "  won  for  us  a  right  to  har- 
ass great  land-owners.  In  another  of  these  expressions  of 
squatter  opinion  I  have  found  the  assertion  that  the  land- 
speculators  stand  on  a  supposed  old  Mexican  legal  right  of 
such  as  themselves  to  take  up  the  whole  territory  of  Cali- 
fornia, in  sections  of  eleven  leagues  each,  by  some  sort  of 
Mexican  preemption.  If  a  squatter  persists  in  understand- 
ing the  land-owner's  position  in  this  way,  his  contempt  for 
it  is  as  natural  as  his  wilful  determination  to  make  game  of 
all  native  Californian  claims  is  obvious. 

But  possibly  the  squatters  would  not  have  shown,  and 
in  fact  would  not  have  developed,  their  doctrine  as  fully 
as  they  in  the  end  did,  had  not  events  hastened  on  a  crisis. 
With  mere  argument  no  squatter  was  content  He  was  a 
squatter,  not  because  he  thoretically  assailed  Sutler's  title, 
but  because  he  actually  squatted  on  land  that  belonged  to 
somebody  else.  In  order  to  do  this  successfully,  the  squat- 
ters combined  into  a  "  Settler's  Association."  They  em- 
ployed a  surveyor  and  issued  to  their  members  "  squatter- 
titles,"  which  were  simply  receipts  given  by  the  surveyor, 
who  was  also  recorder  of  the  Association,  each  certifying 
that  A.  B.  had  paid  the  regular  fee  for  the  mapping  out  of 
a  certain  vacant  lot  of  land,  40  x  160,  within  the  limits  of 
the  town  of  Sacramento.  The  receipts  have  the  motto, 
"The  public  domain  is  free  to  all."*  The  Association 
announced  its  readiness  to  insist,  by  its  combined  force, 
upon  the  rights  of  its  members. 

A  member,  who  has  already  been  quoted,  wrote  to  the 
Placer  Times,  that  "  with  the  Sutter  men  there  has  been 
and  is  now  money  and  power,  and  some  of  them  are  improv- 
ing every  opportunity  to  trouble  and  oppress  the  peaceable, 
hard-working,  order-loving,  and  law-abiding  settler,  which, 
in  the  absence  of  the  mass  of  the  people  in  the  mines,  they 

*  PUcer  Times,  June  7th. 


322  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

do  with  comparative  impunity."  The  italics  are  his  own. 
The  letter  concluded  with  an  assurance  that  the  settlers 
were  organized  to  maintain  what  "country,  nature,  and 
God  "  had  given  to  them.  The  mention  of  the  "  absence  of 
the  people  in  the  mines  "  is  very  characteristic  of  the  pur- 
poses of  the  squatters ;  and  the  reference  to  "  country,  na- 
ture, and  God  "  illustrates  once  more  the  spirit  of  the  move- 
ment 

As  for  this  "  absence  of  the  people,"  the  squatters  plain- 
ly hoped  for  much  in  the  way  of  actual  aid  from  the  min- 
ing population,  whenever  it  should  return  for  another  rainy 
season.  That  system  of  land-tenure  which  was  so  healthful 
in  the  mining  districts,  was  not  just  the  best  school  for 
teaching  a  proper  respect  in  the  presence  of  Mexican  land 
grants.  Colonel  Fremont's  later  experience  in  the  matter 
of  the  Mariposa  grant  proved  that  clearly  enough.  And 
not  only  the  miners,  but  also  the  newly  arriving  emigrants, 
were  expected  to  help  the  squatter  interest,  and  to  over- 
whelm the  speculators.  In  an  editorial  on  squatterism  the 
Placer  Times  *  expressed  not  ill-founded  fears,  as  follows  : 
"Reckless  of  all  principle,"  it  said,  the  squatters  "have  de- 
termined to  risk  all  hopes  upon  the  chances  of  an  immedi- 
ate and  combined  effort,  as  upon  the  hazard  of  a  die." 
"  They  hope,"  the  editorial  continued,  "  to  overcome  all  re- 
sistance for  the  moment,  and  to  get  the  land.  Then  they 
will  have  a  colorable  show  of  title ;  surveys  and  associated 
action  of  other  sorts  will  make  the  thing  look  formal ;  and 
there  will  be  the  law's  delay.  Then  the  immigration  of 
strangers  from  the  plains  will  come  in  with  the  autumn, 
undisciplined  by  our  system,  untutored  by  our  customs,  ig- 
norant of  our  laws,  and  wholly  actuated  by  a  desire  for 
rapid  and  enlarged  accumulation."  These  will  finish  the 
mischief.  "Through  their  thronging  ranks  the  apostles  of 

*  Weekly  edition,  June  29th. 


AN  EPISODE  OF  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.    323 

squatterism  "  will  "  penetrate  far  and  wide,  disseminating 
radical  and  subversive  doctrines,  and  contending  for  an 
indiscriminate  ownership  of  property  by  the  whole  people, 
qualified  only  by  a  right  of  possession  in  the  actual  pos- 
sessor." The  editor,  of  course,  considered  a  conflict  immi- 
nent when  he  wrote  these  words.  And  what  makes  me 
think  his  notion  of  the  significance  of  the  squatter  move- 
ment correct,  is,  in  addition  to  what  has  been  mentioned 
above,  the  fact  that  the  squatters  continued  to  assert  their 
claims  more  and  more  violently  and  publicly  from  this 
time  till  the  end,  but  never  took  any  pains  to  allay  the 
very  natural  alarm  that  they  had  thus  aroused  as  to  their 
intentions.  The  movement  was  plainly  an  agrarian  and 
ultra- American  movement,  opposed  to  all  great  land  own- 
ers, and  especially  to  all  these  Mexican  grantees.* 

The  appeal  quoted  above,  to  "  nature,  country,  and 
God,"  is  also,  as  I  have  said,  characteristic  of  the  spirit  of 
the  movement.  The  writer  of  the  letter  in  question  is  very 
probably  no  other  than  the  distinguished  squatter-leader, 
Doctor  Charles  Robinson  himself,  a  man  to  whom  the  move- 
ment seems  to  have  owed  nearly  all  its  ability.  And  when 
we  speak  of  Doctor  Robinson,  we  have  to  do  with  no  insig- 
nificant demagogue  or  unprincipled  advocate  of  wicked- 
ness, but  with  a  high-minded  and  conscientious  man,  who 
chanced  just  then  to  be  in  the  devil's  service,  but  who  served 
the  devil  honestly,  thoughtfully,  and,  so.  far  as  he  could, 
dutifully,  believing  him  to  be  an  angel  of  light  This 
future  Free-Soil  Governor  of  Kansas,  this  cautious,  clear- 
headed, and  vigorous  anti-slavery  champion  of  the  trou- 


•  One  of  the  Tribune  oquatter  correspondent*  (see  Tribune  for  October 
8, 1850)  says,  after  the  crinis,  that,  owing  to  the  crowd  in  California,  people 
are  much  in  one  another's  way ;  but,  he  adds,  "  of  necessity  the  right*  of 
the  majority  are  mo«t  worthy  of  respect,  and  ought  to  be  maintained." 
Thin  is  the  old  story  of  robbers. 


324  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

blous  days  before  the  war.  who  has  since  survived  so  many 
bitter  quarrels  with  old  foes  and  old  friends,  to  enjoy,  now 
at  last,  his  peaceful  age  at  his  home  in  Lawrence,  Kansas, 
is  not  a  man  of  whom  one  may  speak  with  contempt,  how- 
ever serious  his  error  in  Sacramento  may  seem.  He  was  a 
proper  hero  for  this  tragic  comedy,  and  "  nature,  country, 
and  God  "  were  his  guiding  ideals.  Only  one  must  under- 
stand the  character  that  these  slightly  vague  ideals  seem 
to  have  assumed  in  his  mind.  He  was  a  newcomer  of  1849, 
and  hailed  from  Fitchburg,  Massachusetts.  He  was  a  col- 
lege graduate,  had  studied  medicine,  had  afterwards  re- 
belled against  the  technicalities  of  the  code  of  his  local 
association,  and  had  become  an  independent  practitioner. 
His  friends  and  interests,  as  his  whole  subsequent  career 
showed,  were  with  the  party  of  the  cultivated  New  England 
Radicals  of  that  day.  And  these  cultivated  Radicals  of  the 
anti-slavery  generation,  and  especially  of  Massachusetts, 
were  a  type  in  which  an  impartial  posterity  will  take  a 
huge  delight;  for  they  combined  so  characteristically 
shrewdness,  insight,  devoutness,  vanity,  idealism,  and  self- 
worship.  To  speak  of  them,  of  course,  in  the  rough,  and  as 
a  mass,  not  distinguishing  the  leaders  from  the  rank  and 
file,  nor  blaspheming  the  greater  names,  they  were  usually 
believers  in  quite  abstract  ideals ;  men  who  knew  how  to 
meet  God  "in  the  bush"  whenever  they  wanted,  and  so 
avoided  him  in  the  mart  and  in  the  crowded  street ;  men 
who  had  "  dwelt  cheek  by  jowl,  since  the  day "  they  were 
"  born,  with  the  Infinite  Soul,"  and  whose  relations  with 
him  were  like  those  of  any  man  with  his  own  private 
property.  This  Infinite  that  they  worshipped  was,  however, 
in  his  relations  to  the  rest  of  the  world,  too  often  rather 
abstract,  a  Dens  absconditits,  who  was  as  remote  from  the 
imperfections  and  absurdities  of  the  individual  laws  and  pro- 
cesses of  human  society,  as  he  was  near  to  the  hearts  of  his 
chosen  worshippers.  From  him  they  got  a  so-called  Higher 


AN   EPISODE  OF  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.     325 

Law.  As  it  was  ideal,  and,  like  its  author,  very  abstract,  it 
was  far  above  the  erring  laws  of  men,  and  it  therefore  re- 
lieved its  obedient  servants  from  all  entangling  earthly 
allegiances.  If  the  constitution  upon  which  our  sinful 
national  existence  depended,  and  upon  which  our  only  hope 
of  better  things  also  depended,  was  contradicted  by  this 
Higher  Law,  then  the  constitution  was  a  "  league  with  hell," 
and  anybody  could  set  up  for  himself,  and  he  and  the 
Infinite  might  carry  on  a  government  of  their  own. 

These  Radicals  were,  indeed,  of  the  greatest  value  to  our 
country.  To  a  wicked  and  corrupt  generation  they  preached 
the  gospel  of  a  pure  idealism  fervently  and  effectively.  If 
our  generation  does  not  produce  just  such  men,  it  is  because 
the  best  men  of  our  time  have  learned  from  them,  and  have 
absorbed  their  fervent  and  lofty  idealism  into  a  less  abstract 
and  a  yet  purer  doctrine.  The  true  notion,  as  we  all.  of 
course,  have  heard,  is.  that  there  is  an  ideal  of  personal  and 
social  perfection  far  above  our  natural  sinful  ways,  and 
indeed  revealed  to  us  by  the  agencies  of  spiritual  life,  and 
not  by  baser  worldly  means,  but  not  on  that  account  to  be 
found  or  served  by  separating  ourselves,  or  our  lives,  or  our 
private  judgments,  from  the  social  order,  nor  by  rebelling 
against  this  whole  frame  of  human  error  and  excellence. 
This  divine  ideal  is  partly  and  haltingly  realized  in  just 
these  erring  social  laws — for  instance,  in  the  land  laws  of 
California — and  we  have  to  struggle  in  and  for  the  actual 
social  order,  and  cannot  hope  to  reach  the  divine  by  sulk- 
ing in  the  bush,  or  by  crying  in  the  streets  about  our  pri- 
vate and  personal  Higher  Law,  nor  by  worshipping  any  mere 
abstraction.  That  patient  loyalty  to  the  actual  social  order 
is  the  great  reformer's  first  duty  ;  that  a  service  of  just  this 
erring  humanity,  with  its  imperfect  and  yet  beautiful  sys- 
tem of  delicate  and  highly  organized  relationships,  is  the 
beet  service  that  a  man  can  render  to  the  Ideal .  that  he  is 
the  best  idealist  who  casts  away  as  both  unreal  and  uuideal 


326  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

the  vain  private  imaginings  of  his  own  weak  brain,  when 
ever  he  catches  a  glimpse  of  any  higher  and  wider  truth ; 
all  this  lesson  we,  like  other  peoples  and  generations,  have 
to  study  and  learn.  The  Transcendentalists,  by  their  very 
extravagances,  have  helped  us  towards  this  goal ;  but  we 
must  be  pardoned  if  we  learn  from  them  with  some  little 
amusement.  For  when  we  are  amused  at  them,  we  are 
amused  at  ourselves,  since  only  by  these  very  extravagances 
in  our  own  experience  do  we  ever  learn  to  be  genuine  and 
sensible  idealists. 

Well,  Doctor  Robinson,  also,  had  evidently  learned 
much,  in  his  own  way,  from  teachers  of  this  school.  The 
complex  and  wearisome  details  of  Spanish  Law  plainly  do 
not  interest  him,  since  he  is  at  home  in  the  divine  Higher 
Law.  Concrete  rights  of  rapacious  land  speculators  in  Sac- 
ramento are  unworthy  of  the  attention  of  one  who  sees  so 
clearly  into  the  abstract  rights  of  Man.  God  is  not  in  the 
Sutter  grant,  that  is  plain.  It  is  the  mission  of  the  squatters 
to  introduce  the  divine  justice  into  California:  no  absurd 
justice  that  depends  upon  erroneous  lines  of  latitude,  and 
establishments  at  New  Helvetia,  and  other  like  blundering 
details  of  dark  Spanish  days,  but  the  justice  that  can  be  ex- 
pressed in  grand  abstract  formulae,  and  that  will  hear  of  no 
less  arbiter  than  the  United  States  Supreme  Court  at  the 
very  nearest,  and  is  quite  independent  of  local  courts  and 
processes. 

For  the  rest,  Doctor  Robinson  added  to  his  idealism  the 
aforesaid  Yankee  shrewdness,  and  to  his  trust  in  God  con- 
siderable ingenuity  in  raising  funds  to  keep  the  squatter 
association  at  work.  He  wrote  well  and  spoke  well.  He 
was  thoroughly  in  earnest,  and  his  motives  seem  to  me 
above  any  suspicion  of  personal  greed.  He  made  out  of 
this  squatter  movement  a  thing  of  real  power,  and  was,  for 
the  time,  a  very  dangerous  man. 

Thus  led  and  moved,   the  squatter  association    might 


AN  EPISODE  OP  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.    327 

easily  have  become  the  center  of  a  general  revolutionary 
movement  of  the  sort  above  described.  All  depended  on 
the  tact  of  the  Sacramento  community  in  dealing  with  it 
If  the  affair  came  to  open  bloodshed,  the  public  sentiment 
aroused  would  depend  very  much  upon  where  the  fault  of 
the  first  violence  was  judged  to  lie.  The  mass  of  people 
throughout  the  State  looked  on  such  quarrels,  so  long  as 
they  avoided  open  warfare,  with  a  mixture  of  amusement, 
vexation,  and  indifference.  Amusement  they  felt  in  watch- 
ing any  moderate  quarrel ;  vexation  they  felt  with  all  these 
incomprehensible  laud  grants,  that  covered  so  much  good 
land  and  made  so  many  people  trip ;  and  indifference  largely 
mingled  with  it  all,  at  the  thought  of  home,  and  of  the  near 
fortune  that  would  soon  relieve  the  average  Californian 
from  all  the  accursed  responsibilities  of  this  maddening  and 
fascinating  country.  But  should  the  "land  speculators11 
seem  the  aggressors,  should  the  squatters  come  to  be  looked 
upon  as  an  oppressed  band  of  honest  poor  men,  beaten  and 
murdered  by  high-handed  and  greedy  men  of  wealth,  then 
Robinson  might  become  a  hero,  and  the  squatter  movement, 
under  his  leadership,  might  have  the  whole  sympathetic 
American  public  at  its  back,  and  the  consequences  we  can 
hardly  estimate. 

How  did  the  community,  as  represented  by  its  generous- 
hearted  papers,  meet  the  crisis  ?  Both  these  newspapers  of 
Sacramento  were,  as  the  reader  sees,  editorially  opposed  to 
the  squatters.  They  bandied  back  and  forth  accusations  of 
lukewarmness  in  this  opposition.  But  in  July  the  Tran- 
script, not  formally  changing  its  attitude,  still  began  to  give 
good  reason  for  the  accusation  that  it  was  a  little  disposed 
to  favor  squatterism.  For,  while  it  entirely  ceased  editorial 
comment,  it  began  to  print  lengthy  and  very  readable  ac- 
counts of  the  squatter  meetings,  prepared,  it  is  said,  by  a 
reporter  who  was  himself  a  squatter,  thus  giving  the  squat- 
ters just  the  help  with  the  disinterested  public  that  they 


328  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

desired,  and  supplying  for  the  historical  student  some  amus- 
ing- material.*  By  the  beginning  of  July  the  arguments 
were  all  in  ;  the  time  for  free  abuse  and  vigorous  action  had 
come.  Yet  it  is  just  then  that  this  paper,  whose  motives 
were  but  yesterday  so  pure  and  lofty,  shows  much  more  of 
its  good  humor  than  of  its  wisdom,  and  so  actually  abets 
the  squatter  movement. 

IV. 

The  reader  needs  at  this  point  no  assurance  that  the 
quarrel  was  quite  beyond  any  chance  of  timely  settlement 
by  an  authoritative  trial  of  the  Sutter  title  itself.  Such  a 
trial  was,  of  course,  just  what  the  squatters  themselves  were 
anxious  to  await.  It  was  on  the  impossibility  of  any  imme- 
diate and  final  judicial  settlement  that  their  whole  move- 
ment depended.  Mr.  William  Carey  Jones's  famous  report 
on  California  Land  Titles  reached  the  State  only  during  the 
very  time  of  this  controversy.  Congress  had,  as  yet,  made 
no  provision  for  the  settlement  of  California  Land  Claims. 
The  Supreme  Court  was  a  great  way  off ;  hence  the  vehe- 
mence and  the  piety  of  squatter  appeals  to  God  and  the 
Supreme  Court.  Regular  settlement  being  thus  out  of  the 
question,  some  more  summary  process  was  necessary  to  pro- 
tect the  rights  of  land-owners.  In  the  first  session  of  the 
State  Legislature,  which  had  taken  place  early  in  this  year, 
the  landed  interest  seems  to  have  been  fairly  strong,  appar- 
ently by  virtue  of  those  private  compromises,  which  one  can 
trace  through  the  history  of  the  Constitutional  Convention 
at  Monterey,  and  which  had  been  intended  both  to  meet  the 
political  exigencies  of  the  moment,  and  to  further  the  per- 
sonal ambitions  of  two  or  three  men.  The  result  had  been 

*  See  the  bitter  letter  to  the  editor  of  the  Placer  Times  just  after  the 
crisis,  published  Aug.  16th.  This  letter  may  probably  be  trusted  as  to 
this  one  fact. 


AN  EPISODE  OF  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.     329 

the  establishment  in  California  of  a  procedure  already  well 
known  elsewhere.  The  "Act  Concerning  Forcible  Entry 
and  Unlawful  Detainer"  provided  a  summary  process  for 
ejecting  any  forcible  trespasser  upon  the  land  of  a  previous 
peaceable  occupant,  who  had  himself  had  any  color  of  right 
This  summary  process  was  not  to  be  resorted  to  in  case  the 
question  of  title  properly  entered  into  the  evidence  intro- 
duced in  defense  by  the  supposed  trespasser,  and  the  pro- 
cedure was  no  substitute  for  an  action  of  ejectment  It  was 
intended  to  defend  a  peaceable  possessor  of  land  from  vio- 
lent dispossession,  even  in  case  the  assailant  happened  to 
have  rights  that  would  in  the  end  prove  on  final  trial  supe- 
rior. The  act,  therefore,  was  well  able  to  meet  the  case  of 
the  naked  trespasser,  or  squatter,  who,  without  pretense  of 
title,  took  possession  of  land  that  was  previously  in  the 
peaceable  possession  of  anybody.  The  act  provided  for  his 
ejection,  with  the  addition  of  penalties ;  and  its  framers  had, 
of  course,  no  intention  to  make  it  any  substitute  for  a  judi- 
cial determination  of  title. 

To  this  act  some  of  the  land-owners  of  Sacramento  now 
appealed  for  help.  Moreover,  as  they  were  in  control  of  the 
city  council,  they  proceeded  to  pass,  amid  the  furious  pro- 
tests of  the  squatters,  a  municipal  ordinance,  which  in  the 
end  was  indeed  practically  unenforced,  forbidding  any  one, 
under  serious  penalties,  to  erect  tents,  or  shanties,  or  houses, 
or  to  heap  lumber  or  other  encumbrances,  upon  any  vacant 
lot  belonging  to  a  private  person,  or  upon  any  public  street 
The  land-owners  also  formed  a  "  Law  and  Order  Associa- 
tion,'1 and  printed  in  the  papers  a  notice  of  their  intention 
to  defend  to  the  last  their  property  under  the  Sutter  title. 
They  began  to  drill  companies  of  militia.  A  few  personal 
encounters  took  place  in  various  vacant  lots,  where  owners 
tried  to  prevent  the  erection  of  fences  or  shanties.  Various 
processes  were  served  upon  squatters,  and  executed.  The 
squatter  association  itself  plainly  suffered  a  good  deal  from 


330  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

the  internal  jealousies  or  from  the  mutual  indifference  of  its 
members.  Only  the  ardor  of  Doctor  Robinson  prevented  an 
utter  failure  of  its  organization  long  before  the  crisis.  In 
the  latter  part  of  June,  and  for  some  time  in  July,  the  move- 
ment fell  into  the  background  of  public  attention.  The 
Transcript  helped  it  out  again  into  prominence.  But  the 
squatters  themselves  longed  for  a  newspaper  of  their  own, 
and  sent  for  a  press  and  type.  They  were  accused,  mean- 
while, of  threats  to  fire  the  town  in  case  their  cause  was  put 
down.  But,  after  all,  their  best  chance  of  immediate  suc- 
cess lay  in  raising  money  to  resist  the  suits  brought  against 
them ;  and  to  this  course  Doctor  Robinson,  although  he  had 
conscientious  scruples  about  the  authority  of  any  California 
law,  urged  his  followers  as  to  the  most  expedient  present 
device.  It  is  at  this  point  that  the  meetings  of  the  squatters 
begin  to  receive  lengthy  reports. 

At  a  meeting  reported  in  the  Transcript  for  July  2d,  one 
squatter  objected  to  going  to  law.  It  was  unnecessary,  he 
said;  for  this  whole  thing  of  the  Sutter  title  was  illegal. 
He  was  answered  by  one  Mr.  Milligan,  to  the  effect  that 
the  object  was  to  keep  their  enemies  at  bay  until  the  ques- 
tion could  be  brought  before  a  legal  tribunal,  where  justice 
could  be  done.  Mr.  Milligan  was  then  sent  about  in  the 
country  to  the  "brother  squatters,"  who  were  so  numerous 
near  Sacramento,  for  subscriptions.  In  a  meeting  narrated 
in  the  Transcript  for  July  4th,  he  reported  imperfect  success. 
Some  of  the  brethren  were  not  at  home ;  one  told  the  story 
about  the  man  who  got  rich  by  minding  his  own  business ; 
few  had  money  to  spare.  Doctor  Robinson  had  some  re- 
assuring remarks  in  reply  to  this  report,  and  Mr.  Milligan 
himself  then  made  an  eloquent  speech.  "  The  squatters 
were  men  of  firmness ;  their  cause  had  reached  the  Stales ; 
they  had  many  hearty  sympathizers  on  the  Atlantic  shores." 
His  thoughts  became  yet  wider  in  their  sweep,  as  he  dwelt 
on  the  duty  of  never  yielding  to  oppression.  "  He  saw,  a 


AN  EPISODE  OP  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.    331 

few  days  ago,  a  crowd  of  Chinese  emigrants  in  this  land ; 
he  hoped  to  be  able  to  send  through  these  people  the  intelli- 
gence to  the  Celestial  Empire  that  the  Emperor  don't  own 
all  the  laud  in  the  world,  and  so  he  hoped  the  light  would 
soon  shine  in  Calcutta — throughout  India,  and  Bengal,  and 
Botany  Bay,  and  lift  up  the  cloud  of  moral  darkness  and 
rank  oppression."  This  Oriental  enthusiasm  reads  very 
delightfully  in  these  days,  and  is  worth  preserving. 

By  the  time  of  the  meeting  of  July  24th,  which  was  held 
in  "  Herkimer  Hall,"  and  was  reported  in  the  Transcript  of 
the  25th,  the  talk  was  a  little  less  world-embracing,  and  the 
feeling  keener.  Some  land-owners  had  taken  the  law  into 
their  own  hands,  and  had  been  tearing  down  a  fence  erected 
by  squatters.  Doctor  Robinson  announced  that  he  would 
help  to  put  up  that  fence  next  day,  whereupon  rose  Mr.  Mc- 
Clatchy*  He  was  a  law-abiding  citizen,  but  would  submit 
to  no  injustice.  He  would  rather  fight  than  collect  sub- 
scriptions any  day.  If  land-owners  wanted  to  fight  let  them 
fight,  and  the  devil  take  the  hindmost  "  Let  us  put  up  all 
the  fences  pulled  down,  and  let  us  put  up  all  the  men  who 
pulled  them  down."  This  last  suggestion  was  greeted  with 
great  applause  and  stamping. 

Doctor  Robinson  introduced  resolutions  declaring,  among 
other  strong  words,  that  "  if  the  bail  of  an  arrested  squatter 
be  refused  simply  because  the  bondsman  is  not  a  land-holder 
under  Captain  Sutter,  we  shall  consider  all  executions  issued 
in  consequence  thereof  as  acts  of  illegal  force,  and  shall 
act  accordingly."  In  urging  his  resolutions,  he  pointed  out 
how  the  land  speculators'  doctrine  about  land  grants  would 
certainly  result  in  the  oppression  of  the  poor  man  all  over 


*  Jamea  McClatchy,  author  of  the  March  -J.'.th  letter  to  the  New  York 
Tribune,  had  previounly  boon  Mtociated  with  land-reform  movement*  in 
York  State.    He,  too,  knew  the  Higher  Law  by  heart,  and  was  a  man 
of  some  ability. 


332  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

California.  "  Was  this  right  ?  Was  it  a  blessing  ?  If  so, 
Ireland  was  blessed,  and  all  other  oppressed  countries. 
Would  any  Anglo-Saxon  endure  this  ?  The  Southern  slave 
was  not  worse  treated."  Doctor  Robinson  dwelt  on  the  low 
character  of  these  speculators.  Look  at  the  mayor,  at  the 
councilmen,  and  the  rest.  "There  were  no  great  minds 
among  them.  And  yet  these  were  the  men  who  claimed 
the  land.  Can  such  men  be  men  of  principle  ? "  He  thought 
that  "  we  should  abide  by  all  just  laws,  not  unjust." 

Mr.  McClatchy  now  pointed  out  that  God's  laws  were 
above  man's  laws,  and  that  God  gave  man  the  earth  for  his 
heritage.  In  this  instance,  however,  the  laws  of  our  own 
land,  whenever,  of  course,  we  could  appeal  to  them  in  the 
Supreme  Court,  were  surely  on  our  side,  and  so  seconded 
God's  law.  "  If  the  land-holders,"  he  said,  winding  up  his 
philosophic  train  of  thought,  "  act  as  they  do,  we  shall  be 
obliged  to  lick  'em." 

A  Mr.  Burke  was  proud  to  feel  that  by  their  language 
that  evening  they  had  already  been  violating  those  city  or- 
dinances which  forbade  assemblages  for  unlawful  ends.  "  A 
fig  for  their  laws ;  they  have  no  laws."  "  Mr.  Burke,"  says 
the  report,  "  was  game  to  the  last — all  fight — and  was  highly 
applauded."  The  resolutions  were  readily  adopted,  and  the 
meeting  adjourned  in  a  state  of  fine  enthusiasm. 

In  the  second  week  of  August  a  case  under  the  "  Forci- 
ble Entry  and  Detainer  Act  "  came  before  the  County  Court, 
Willis,  Judge,  on  appeal  from  a  justice's  court  of  the  city. 
The  squatters'  association  appealed,  on  the  ground  that  the 
plaintiff  in  the  original  suit  had  shown  no  true  title  to  the 
land.  The  justice  had  decided  that  under  the  evidence  the 
squatter  in  question  was  a  naked  trespasser,  who  made  for 
himself  no  pretense  of  title,  and  that,  therefore,  in  a  trial 
under  the  act  the  question  of  title  had  not  properly  entered  as 
part  of  the  evidence  at  all.  The  appeal  was  made  from  this 
decision  and  was  promptly  dismissed.  The  squatters  were 


AN   EPISODE  OP  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.    333 

furious.  Sutler  had  no  title,  and  a  man  was  a  squatter  on  the 
land  for  just  that  reason ;  and  yet  when  the  courts  were  ap- 
pealed to  for  help  in  sustaining  the  settler  they  thus  refused 
to  hear  the  grounds  of  his  plea,  and  proposed  to  eject  him 
as  a  trespasser.  Well,  the  United  States  courts  could  be 
appealed  to  some  time.  One  could  well  afford  to  wait  for 
them  if  only  the  process  under  the  State  act  could  be  stayed, 
and  the  squatter  left  in  peaceable  possession  meanwhile.  To 
this  end  one  must  appeal  to  the  State  Supreme  Court  But 
alas !  Judge  Willis,  when  asked  in  court,  after  he  had  ren- 
dered decision,  for  a  stay  of  proceedings  pending  appeal  to 
the  State  Supreme  Court,  replied,  somewhat  informally,  in 
conversation  with  the  attorneys,  that  it  was  not  clear  to  him 
whether  the  act  in  question,  or  any  other  law,  permitted  ap- 
peal from  the  county  court's  decision  in  a  case  like  this. 
He  took  the  matter  under  advisement  But  the  squatters 
present,  in  a  fit  of  rage,  misunderstood  the  judge's  hesitat- 
ing remark.  They  rushed  from  the  court  to  excited  meet- 
ings outside,  and  spread  abroad  the  news  that  Judge  Willis 
had  not  only  decided  against  them,  but  had  decided  that 
from  him  there  was  no  appeal.  Woe  to  such  laws  and  to 
such  judges !  The  law  betrays  us.  We  will  appeal  to  the 
Higher  Law.  The  processes  of  the  courts  shall  not  be 
served! 

Doctor  Robinson  was  not  unequal  to  the  emergency.  At 
once  he  sent  out  notices  calling  a  mass-meeting  of  "  squat- 
ters and  others  interested,"  to  take  place  the  same  evening, 
August  10th.  It  was  Saturday,  and  when  night  came  a 
large  crowd  of  squatters,  of  land-owners,  and  of  idlers,  had 
gathered.  The  traditional  leisure  of  Saturday  night  made 
a  great  part  of  the  assembly  as  cheerful  as  it  was  eager  for 
novelty  and  interested  in  this  affair.  Great  numbers  were 
there  simply  to  see  fair  play ;  and  this  general  public,  in 
their  characteristically  American  good-humor,  were  quite 
unwilling  to  recognize  any  sort  of  seriousness  in  the  occa- 


334  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

sion.  These  jolly  onlookers  interrupted  the  squatter  orators, 
called  for  E.  J.  C.  Kewen  and  Sara  Brannan  as  representa- 
tives of  the  land-owners,  listened  to  them  awhile,  interrupted 
them  when  the  thing  grew  tedious,  and  enjoyed  the  utter 
confusion  that  for  the  time  reigned  on  the  platform.  At 
length  the  crowd  were  ready  for  Doctor  Robinson  and  his 
inevitable  resolutions.  He,  for  his  part,  was  serious  enough. 
He  had  been  a  moderate  man,  he  said,  but  the  time  for  mod- 
eration was  past.  He  was  ready  to  have  his  corpse  left  on 
his  own  bit  of  land  ere  he  would  yield  his  rights.  Then  he 
read  his  resolutions,  which  sufficiently  denounced  Judge 
Willis  and  the  laws ;  and  thereafter  he  called  for  the  sense 
of  the  meeting.  Dissenting  voices  rang  out,  but  the  resolu- 
tions received  a  loud  affirmative  vote  and  were  declared  car- 
ried. The  regular  business  of  the  meeting  was  now  done ; 
but  for  a  long  time  yet  various  ambitious  speakers  mounted 
the  platform  and  sought  to  address  the  crowd,  which  amused 
itself  by  roaring  at  them  or  by  watching  them  pushed  from 
their  high  place. 

Next  day  Doctor  Robinson  was  early  at  work  drawing 
up  in  his  own  way  a  manifesto  to  express  the  sense  of  his 
party.  It  was  a  very  able  and  reckless  document.  Robin- 
son had  found  an  unanswerable  fashion  of  stating  the 
ground  for  devotion  to  the  Higher  Law  as  opposed  to  State 
Law.  There  was,  the  paper  reminded  the  people,  no  true 
State  here  at  all ;  for  Congress  had  not  admitted  California 
as  yet,  and  it  was  still  a  mere  Territory.  What  the  Legisla- 
ture in  San  Jose  had  done  was  no  law-making.  It  had  passed 
some  "rules"  which  had  merely  " advisory  force."  These 
were,  some  of  them,  manifestly  unconstitutional  and  op- 
pressive. The  act  now  in  question  was  plainly  of  this  na- 
ture. Worst  of  all,  the  courts  organized  by  this  advisory 
body  now  refused  an  appeal  from  their  own  decisions  even 
to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  State.  Such  a  decision,  thus 
cutting  off  an  appeal  on  a  grave  question  of  title,  that  could 


AN  EPISODE  OP  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.    335 

in  fact  be  settled  only  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States,  was  not  to  be  endured.  The  settlers  were  done  with 
such  law  that  was  no  law.  "  The  people  in  this  community 
called  settlers,  and  others  who  are  friends  of  justice  and  hu- 
manity, in  consideration  of  the  above,  have  determined  to 
disregard  all  decisions  of  our  courts  in  land  cases,  and  all 
summonses  or  executions  by  the  sheriff,  constable,  or  other 
officer  of  the  present  county  or  city  touching  this  matter. 
They  will  regard  the  said  officers  as  private  citizens,  as  in 
the  eyes  of  the  Constitution  they  are,  and  hold  them  respon- 
sible accordingly."  If,  then,  the  document  went  on  to  say, 
the  officers  in  question  appealed  to  force,  the  settlers  "  have 
deliberately  resolved  to  appeal  to  arms,  and  protect  their 
sacred  rights,  if  need  be,  with  their  lives." 

The  confused  assent  of  the  Saturday  night  torchlight 
meeting  to  a  manifesto  of  this  sort,  an  assent  such  as  the 
previous  resolutions  had  gained,  would  have  been  worth 
very  little.  Where  were  the  men  and  the  arms  ?  Doctor 
Robinson  was  man  enough  himself  to  know  what  this  sort 
of  talk  must  require  if  it  was  to  have  meaning.  But  what 
he  did  he  can  best  tell.  In  his  tent,  after  the  crisis,  was 
found  an  unfinished  letter  to  a  friend  in  the  East  It  was 
plainly  never  intended  for  the  public  eye,  and  may  surely 
be  accepted  as  a  perfectly  sincere  statement  The  news- 
papers published  it  as  soon  as  it  was  found,  and  from  the 
Placer  Times  of  August  15th  I  have  it  noted  down. 

The  date  is  Monday,  the  12th  of  August.  "Since  writing 
you  we  have  seen  much  and  experienced  much  of  an  im- 
portant character,  as  well  as  much  excitement  .  .  .  The 
County  Judge  on  Saturday  morning  declared  that  from  his 
decision  there  should  be  no  appeal."  Then  the  letter  pro- 
ceeds to  tell  how  the  meeting  was  called,  as  narrated  abore. 
The  call  "  was  responded  to  by  both  parties,  and  the  specu- 
lators, as  aforetime,  attempted  to  talk  against  time.  On  the 
passage  of  a  series  of  resolution*  presented  by  your  humble 
U 


330  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

servant,  there  were  about  three  ayes  to  one  nay,  although 
the  Transcript  said  that  they  were  about  equal.  Sunday 
morning  I  drew  up  a  manifesto,  carried  it  to  church,  paid 
one  dollar  for  preaching,  helped  them  sing,  showed  it  to  a 
lawyer,  to  see  if  my  position  was  correct  legally,  and  pro- 
cured the  printing  of  it  in  handbills  and  in  the  paper,  after 
presenting  it  to  a  private  meeting  of  friends  for  their  ap- 
proval, which  I  addressed  at  some  length.  After  a  long  talk 
for  the  purpose  of  comforting  a  gentleman  just  in  from  the 
plains,  and  who,  the  day  before,  had  buried  his  wife,  whom 
he  loved  most  tenderly,  and  a  few  days  previous  to  that  had 
lost  his  son,  I  threw  myself  upon  my  blankets,  and  '  seriously 
thought  of  the  morrow.' 

"What  will  be  the  result  ?  Shall  I  be  borne  out  in  my 
position  ?  On  whom  can  I  depend  ?  How  many  of  those 
who  are  squatters  will  come  out  if  there  is  a  prospect  of  a 
fight  ?  Have  I  strictly  defined  our  position  in  the  bill  ? 
Will  the  world,  the  universe,  and  God  say  it  is  just,  etc.  ? 
Will  you  call  me  rash  if  I  tell  you  that  I  took  these  steps  to 
this  point  when  I  could  get  but  twenty-five  men  to  pledge 
themselves  on  paper  to  sustain  me,  and  many  of  them,  I  felt, 
were  timid  ?  Such  was  the  case." 

In  the  night  we  deal,  if  we  like,  with  the  world,  the  uni- 
verse, and  God.  In  the  morning  we  have  to  deal  with  such 
things  as  the  Sheriff,  the  Mayor,  and  the  writs  of  the  County 
Court — things  with  which,  as  we  have  already  learned  from 
the  squatters,  God  has  nothing  whatever  to  do !  One  won- 
ders, in  passing,  whether  the  church  in  which  Doctor  Rob- 
inson so  lustily  sang  and  so  cheerfully  paid  his  dollar  that 
bright  August  Sunday  was  Doctor  Benton's.  If  so,  the  set- 
tlers' leader  surely  must  have  noticed  a  contrast  between  his 
own  God  of  the  Higher  Law  and  the  far  more  concrete 
Deity  that  this  noted  and  able  pioneer  preacher  always  pre- 
sented to  his  audiences.  That  orthodox  Deity,  whatever  else 
may  have  seemed  doubtful  about  him,  was  surely  conceived 


AN  EPISODE  OP  EARLY  CALIFORNIA   LIFE.     337 

and  presented  as  having  very  definite  and  living  relation- 
ships to  all  rulers  who  bear  not  the  sword  in  vain.  And  no- 
body, whatever  his  own  philosophic  or  theological  views, 
ought  to  have  any  hesitation  as  to  which  of  these  two  con- 
ceptions is  the  worthier  of  a  good  citizen,  however  incom- 
plete both  of  them  may  be  for  philosophy.  And  now,  to 
state  this  crisis  in  a  heathen  fashion,  we  may  say  that  the 
concrete  Deity  of  the  actual  law,  and  Doctor  Robinson's  ideal 
abstract  Deity  of  the  Higher  Law,  were  about  to  enter  into 
open  warfare,  with  such  temporary  result  as  the  relative 
strength  of  unwise  city  authorities  and  weak-kneed  squat- 
ters might  determine.  For  to  such  earthen  vessels  are  the 
great  ideals,  good  and  evil,  entrusted  on  this  earth. 

What  other  squatters  thought  meanwhile  is  sufficiently 
shown  by  two  letters  from  their  side,  one  written  just  after 
the  crisis,  the  other  some  months  later,  and  published  in 
Eastern  newspapers.  The  first  says :  "  The  cause  of  all  this 
[difficulty]  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  land  monopoly," 
and  denies  that  the  squatters  could  have  done  anything  but 
what  they  did.  The  second  says,  long  after,  be  it  noticed, 
and  when  the  lessons  of  the  affair  ought  to  have  been  clear 
to  every  one,  that  the  squatters  have  clearly  shown  their 
intent  to  fight  to  the  death  against  all  "  favoritism  "  shown 
to  old  Califomians.  American  citizens  will  never,  the 
writer  of  the  letter  says,  submit  to  such  outrageous  injus- 
tice. He  was  himself  present  at  the  fight  and  speaks  au- 
thoritatively. 

v. 

Morning  came,  and  with  it  the  printed  manifesto.  The 
city,  with  all  its  show  of  care  and  all  its  warnings  during 
the  last  few  months,  was  wholly  unprepared  for  proper  re- 
sistance to  organized  rebellion.  The  populace  was  aroused, 
crowds  ran  to  and  fro,  rumors  flew  thick  and  fast  Doctor 
Robinson  was  found  on  a  lot,  at  the  corner  of  Second  and 
N  Streets,  where  the  Sheriff  was  expected  to  appear  to  serve 


338  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

a  writ.  By  adroitness  in  making  speeches  and  by  similar 
devices  the  doctor  collected  and  held,  in  apparent  sympathy 
with  himself,  a  crowd  of  about  two  hundred,  whom  he  de- 
sired to  have  appear  as  all  squatters,  and  all  "  men  of  valor."  * 
Meanwhile  names  were  enrolled  by  him  as  volunteers  for 
immediate  action,  a  military  commander  of  the  company 
was  chosen — one  Maloney,  a  veteran  of  the  Mexican  War — 
and  in  all  some  fifty  men  were  soon  under  arms.  Mayor 
Bigelow  now  approached  on  horseback,  and  from  the  saddle 
addressed  the  crowd.  It  would  be  best,  he  said,  for  them  to 
disperse,  otherwise  there  might  be  trouble.  Doctor  Robin- 
son was  spokesman  in  answer.  "  I  replied,"  he  says  in  his 
letter,  "most  respectfully,  that  we  were  assembled  to  injure 
no  one  and  to  assail  no  one  who  left  us  alone.  We  were  on 
our  own  property,  with  no  hostile  intentions  while  unmo- 
lested." The  Mayor  galloped  off,  and  was  soon  followed  to 
his  office  by  a  little  committee  of  the  squatters,  Doctor  Rob- 
inson once  more  spokesman.  They  wanted,  so  they  said,  to 
explain  their  position  so  that  there  could  be  no  mistake. 
They  were  anxious  to  avoid  bloodshed,  and  begged  Bigelow 
to  use  his  influence  to  prevent  service  of  the  processes  of  the 
Court.  Doctor  Robinson  understood  the  Mayor  to  promise 
to  use  the  desired  influence  in  a  private  way  and  as  a  peace- 
loving  citizen.  They  then  warned  him  that,  if  advantage 
should  be  taken  of  their  acceptance  of  his  assurance,  and  if 
writs  were  served  in  the  absence  of  their  body  of  armed 
men,  they  would  hold  him  and  the  Sheriff  responsible  ac- 
cording to  their  proclamation.  The  Placer  Times  of  Tues- 
day morning  declares  that  the  Mayor's  reply  assured  the 
squatters  of  his  intention  to  promise  nothing  but  a  strict  en- 
forcement of  the  law. 

Doctor  Robinson's  letter  seems  to  have  been  written  just 
after  this  interview.    In  the  evening  the  rumor  was  preva- 

*  See  his  letter,  after  the  passage  quoted  above. 


AN  EPISODE  OF  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.    339 

lent  that  a  warrant  was  out  for  his  arrest  and  that  of  the 
other  ringleaders.  Many  squatters,  very  variously  and  some- 
times amusingly  armed,  still  hung  about  the  disputed  lot  of 
land.  On  Tuesday,  possibly  because  of  the  Mayor's  sup- 
posed assurance,  the  squatters  were  less  wary.  Their  ene- 
mies took  advantage  of  their  dispersed  condition,*  and  ar- 
rested the  redoubtable  McClatchy,  with  one  other  leader. 
These  they  took  to  the  "  prison  brig,"  out  in  the  river.  In 
the  afternoon  the  Sheriff  quietly  put  the  owners  of  the  dis- 
puted lot  in  possession,  apparently  in  the  absence  of  squat- 
ters. The  Mayor's  assurance,  if  he  had  given  one,  was  thus 
seen  to  be  ineffective.  There  was  no  appeal  now  left  the 
squatters  but  to  powder  and  ball. 

It  seems  incredible,  but  it  is  true,  that  Wednesday  morn- 
ing, August  14th,  found  the  authorities  still  wholly  unpre- 
pared to  overawe  the  lawless  defenders  of  the  Higher  Law. 
When  the  squatters  assembled,  some  thirty  or  forty  in  num- 
ber, all  armed,  and  "men  of  valor"  this  time  when  they 
marched  under  Maloney's  leadership  to  the  place  on  Second 
Street,  and  once  more  drove  off  the  owners ;  when  they  then 
proceeded  down  to  the  levee,  intending  to  go  out  to  the 
prison  brig  and  rescue  their  friends ;  when  they  gave  up  this 
idea,  and  marched  along  I  Street  to  Third  in  regular  order, 
Maloney  in  front  on  horseback,  with  a  drawn  sword,  there 
was  no  force  visible  ready  to  disperse  them  ;  and  they  were 
followed  by  a  crowd  of  unarmed  citizens,  who  were  hooting 
and  laughing  at  them.f  Reaching  the  corner  of  Tliird 

*  The  letter  in  the  New  York  Tribune  of  October  15,  I860,  by  a  squat- 
ter,  says  that  the  young  man  who  claimed  possession  as  a  squatter  waa 
absent  from  the  disputed  land  on  Tuesday  by  reason  of  hi*  attendance  at 
the  examination  of  the  arrested  squatters  in  court  McClatchy  is  also  her* 
said  to  have  given  himself  up. 

t  Transcript  and  Times  of  August  15.  Compare  Mr.  Stillman's  Golden 
Fleece,  p.  172 :  New  York  Tribune  of  September  21,  September  25,  Octob»» 
7,  October  15, 1850. 


34:0  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

Street,  they  turned  into  that  street,  passed  on  until  J  Street 
was  reached,  and  then  marched  out  J  toward  Fourth  Street. 

At  this  point,  Mayor  Bigelow,  who  had  already  been 
busily  attempting  to  rouse  the  people  near  the  levee,  ap- 
peared in  the  rear  of  the  crowd  of  sight-seeing  followers,  on 
horseback,  and  called  upon  all  good  citizens  to  help  him  to 
disperse  the  rioters  at  once.  His  courage  was  equal  to  his 
culpable  carelessness  in  having  no  better  force  at  hand  ;  but 
to  his  call  a  few  of  the  unarmed  citizens  replied  (men  such 
as  Doctor  Stillman  himself,  for  instance)  that  the  squatters 
could  not  be  gotten  rid  of  so  easily  by  a  merely  extempore 
show  of  authority,  since  they  surely  meant  to  fire  if  mo- 
lested. The  Mayor  denied,  confidently,  this  possibility ;  the 
squatters-  were,  to  his  mind,  but  a  crew  of  blustering  fellows, 
who  meant  nothing  that  would  lead  them  into  danger.  He 
overtook  the  crowd  of  citizen  followers,  repeating  his  call ; 
and  the  mass  of  this  crowd  gaily  obeyed.  Three  cheers  for 
the  Mayor  were  given,  and  the  improvised  posse,  led  by 
Mayor  and  Sheriff,  ran  on  in  pursuit  of  their  game.  Only 
one  who  has  seen  an  American  street-crowd  in  a  moment 
of  popular  excitement,  can  understand  the  jolly  and  careless 
courage  that  seems  to  have  prevailed  in  this  band,  or  their 
total  lack  of  sense  of  what  the  whole  thing  meant.  They 
were  indeed  not  all  unarmed,  by  any  means ;  but  it  seems 
impossible  that,  acting  as  they  did,  they  could  have  been  ex- 
pecting to  draw  fire  from  the  squatters. 

On  J  Street,  Maloney  of  the  drawn  sword  turned  about 
on  his  horse  to  look,  when  lo  !  the  Mayor,  with  the  Sheriff, 
and  with  the  little  army,  was  in  pursuit.  The  moment  of 
vengeance  for  broken  promises  had  come.  Promptly  the 
squatter  company  wheeled,  drew  into  line  across  Fourth,  and 
awaited  the  approach  of  the  enemy,  taking  him  thus  in 
Hank.  Undaunted  the  Mayor  rode  up,  and  voiced  the  maj- 
esty of  the  law,  by  ordering  the  squatters  to  lay  down  their 
arms,  and  to  give  themselves  up  as  prisoners.  The  citizen 


AN  EPISODE  OP  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.     34-1 

array  cheerfully  crowded  about  Bigelow,  and  in  front  of 
the  armed  rioters,  curious,  no  doubt,  to  watch  the  outcome, 
anxious,  it  would  seem,  to  enjoy  a  joke,  incredulous  of  any 
danger  from  the  now  so  familiar  boasters.  Armed  and  un- 
armed men  seem  to  have  been  huddled  together  in  confu- 
sion, beside  the  Mayor  and  the  Sheriff.  But  the  armed  men 
displayed  their  weapons  freely,  and  were  ready  for  whatever 
might  result  Thus  everything  was  done  to  tempt  a  disaster. 

The  accounts  of  the  scene  that  are  written  by  the 
squatters  themselves,  pretend  that  they  replied  to  the  May- 
or, refusing  to  surrender  their  arms,  and  even  add  that  he 
himself  first  discharged  a  barrel  of  his  own  pistol  before 
they  began.  But  the  newspaper  reports,  and  Doctor  Still- 
man's  account,  make  it  tolerably  clear  that  the  squatters  had 
no  intention  of  treating  further  at  this  moment  with  the 
Mayor,  and  make  it  doubtful  whether  they  even  replied  to 
him.  As  the  Mayor  spoke,  Maloney  was  heard  giving  or- 
ders. "  Shoot  the  Mayor,"  he  said  ;  and  at  the  words  firing 
began— a  volley,  Doctor  Stillman  calls  it,  who  saw  the 
whole  from  a  block  away— an  irregular,  hasty,  ill-aimed, 
rattle  of  guns  and  pistols,  most  accounts  make  it 

Men  standing  further  down  the  street  saw  the  crowd 
scatter  in  all  directions,  and  in  a  moment  more  saw  the 
Mayor's  horse  dash  riderless  towards  the  river.  Those 
nearer  by  saw  how  armed  men  among  the  citizens,  with  a 
quick  reaction,  fired  their  pistols,  and  closed  in  on  the 
rioters.  Maloney  fell  dead.  Doctor  Robinson  lay  severely 
wounded.  On  the  side  of  the  citizens,  Woodland,  the  city 
assessor,  was  shot  dead,  the  Mayor  himself,  thrice  severely 
wounded,  had  staggered  a  few  steps,  after  dropping  from 
his  horse,  and  had  fallen  on  the  pavement  In  all  there 
were  two  *  squatters  and  one  of  the  citizens'  party  killed, 

•  Thrtt,  nays  the  Transcript,  but  never  gives  the  name  of  tfaia  third. 
The  other  account*  name  two. 


342  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

and  one  squatter  and  four  citizens*  wounded.  Like  a 
lightning  flash  the  battle  came,  and  was  done.  The  array 
of  the  squatters  melted  away  like  a  mist  when  the  two 
leaders  were  seen  to  fall ;  the  confused  mass  of  the  citizens, 
shocked  and  awe-stricken  where  they  were  not  terrified, 
waited  no  longer  on  the  field  than  the  others,  hut  scattered 
wildly.  A  few  moments  later,  when  Doctor  Stillman  re- 
turned with  his  shotgun  which,  on  the  first  firing,  he  had 
gone  but  half  a  block  to  get,  the  street  was  quite  empty  of 
armed  men.  He  waited  for  some  time  to  see  any  one  in 
authority.  At  length  Lieutenant-Governor  McDougal  ap- 
peared, riding  at  full  speed,  "  his  face  very  pale."  "  Get  all 
the  armed  men  you  can,"  he  said,  and  rendezvous  at  Foster's 
hotel." 

"  I  went  to  the  place  designated,"  says  Doctor  Stillman, 
"  and  there  found  a  few  men,  who  had  got  an  old  iron 
ship's  gun,  mounted  on  a  wooden  truck ;  to  its  axles  was 
fastened  a  long  dray  pole.  The  gun  was  loaded  with  a  lot 
of  scrap  iron.  I  wanted  to  know  where  McDougal  was. 
We  expected  him  to  take  the  command  and  die  with  us. 
I  inquired  of  Mrs.  McDougal,  who  was  stopping  at  the 
hotel,  what  had  become  of  her  husband.  She  said  he  had 
gone  to  San  Francisco  for  assistance.  Indeed  he  was  on 
his  way  to  the  steamer  'Senator'  when  I  saw  him,  and  he 
left  his  horse  on  the  bank  of  the  river." 

In  such  swift,  dreamlike  transformations  the  experiences 
of  the  rest  of  the  day  passed  by.  In  the  afternoon,  Caulfield, 
a  squatter  leader,  who  had  fled  from  the  scene  of  the  fight, 
was  captured,  and  brought  toward  the  prison  brig,  his  feet 
tied  under  his  horse's  belly,  his  face  covered  with  blood  and 
dust.  He  had  been  knocked  from  his  horse  with  the  butt  of 
a  pistol  as  he  fought  with  his  pursuers.  So  Doctor  Stillman 

*  Of  these  four  one  indeed  was  a  non-combatant,  a  little  girl  just  then 
on  the  street,  whose  injury  was  not  very  serious. 


AX   EPISODE  OF  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.    343 

tells  us.  From  the  newspapers  we  learn  how  people  gener- 
ally felt  that  afternoon.  Rumors  were  countless.  The 
squatters  had  gone  out  of  the  city  ;  they  would  soon  return. 
They  were,  it  was  asserted,  seven  hundred  strong.  They 
meant  vengeance.  They  would  fire  the  city.  Yes,  they 
had  already  fired  the  city,  although  nobody  knew  where. 
No  one  could  foresee  the  end  of  the  struggle.  The  city, 
men  said,  had  been  declared  under  martial  law.  Every- 
body must  come  out.  The  whole  force  of  the  State  would 
doubtless  be  needed.  If  the  squatter's  failed  now,  they 
would  go  to  the  mines,  and  arouse  the  whole  population 
there.  One  would  have  to  fight  all  the  miners  as  well. 
Such  things  flew  from  mouth  to  mouth ;  such  reports  the 
"  Senator  "  carried  towards  San  Francisco,  with  the  pale-faced 
Lieutenant-Governor,  who  himself  landed,  by  the  way,  at 
Benecia,  to  appeal  for  help  to  the  general  of  the  United 
States  forces  there  placed.  Such  reports  were  even  sent 
East  by  the  first  steamer,  and  there  printed  in  newspapers 
ere  they  could  be  contradicted. 

As  a  fact,  however,  the  most  serious  danger  was  already 
past  The  opening  of  the  fight  had  made  the  squatters 
seem,  in  the  public  eye,  unequivocally  lawless  and  danger- 
ous aggressors.  They  could  expect,  for  the  moment  at  least, 
no  sympathy,  but  only  stern  repression.  And  so,  in  reality, 
the  city  was  never  safer,  as  a  whole,  than  it  was  a  few 
hours  after  the  fatal  meeting  at  the  corner  of  Fourth  and  J 
Streets.  A  little  flowing  blood  is  a  very  effective  sight  for 
our  public.  Conscience  and  passion  are  alike  aroused  in 
the  community.  American  good-humor  gives  way,  for  the 
instant,  to  the  sternest  and  most  bigotted  hatred  of  the  of- 
fenders. So,  in  Sacramento,  there  was  just  now  no  mercy 
for  the  squatters.  Their  late  attorney  was  threatened  with 
hanging.  Their  friends  fled  the  town.  And  even  while  the 
wild  rumors  were  flying,  the  most  perfect  safety  from  inva- 
sion had  been  actually  secured  in  the  city  limits. 


344  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

But  yet  neither  the  bloodshed  nor  the  terror  was  wholly 
done.  Outside  the  city  limits  there  was  yet  to  occur  a  most 
serious  and  deplorable  encounter.  The  squatters  were  ac- 
tually scattered  in  all  directions ;  but  the  rumors  made  it 
seem  advisable  to  prevent  further  attacks,  by  armed  sallies 
into  the  country,  and  by  arrest  of  leaders.  Thursday  after- 
noon (just  after  the  funeral  of  Woodland),  the  Sheriff, 
McKinney,  with  an  armed  force  in  which  were  several  well- 
known  prominent  citizens,  set  out  towards  Mormon  Island, 
with  the  intention  of  finding  and  bringing  in  prisoners.* 
That  the  Sheriff  had  no  writs  for  the  arrest  of  any  one,  and 
only  the  vaguest  notion  of  his  own  authority,  seems  plain. 
Panic  was  king.  At  the  house  of  one  Allen,  who  kept  a 
bar-room  some  seven  miles  out,  the  Sheriff  sought  for  squat- 
ters, having  been  informed  that  several  were  there.  It  was 
now  already  dark.  Leaving  the  body  of  his  force  outside, 
the  Sheriff  approached  the  house  with  a  few  men  and  en- 
tered. There  were  a  number  of  occupants  visible,  all  alarmed 
and  excited.  The  writless  Sheriff's  party  were  unaware 
that,  in  the  back  room  of  the  house,  Mrs.  Allen  lay  seriously 
ill,  attended  by  her  adopted  daughter,  a  girl  of  sixteen.  To 
be  seen  at  the  moment  were  only  men,  and  they  had  arms. 
McKinney  called  out  to  Allen  to  surrender  himself  to  the 
Sheriff.  Allen  replied,  not  unnaturally,  that  this  was  his 
house,  his  castle.  He  proposed  to  fight  for  it.  McKinney 
repeated  :  "  I  am  Sheriff ;  lay  down  your  arms."  What 
followed  is  very  ill-told  by  the  eye-witnesses,  for  the  dark- 
ness and  the  confusion  made  everything  dim.  At  all  events, 
some  of  the  Sheriff's  party  left  the  house,  perhaps  to  call  for 
assistance  from  the  main  body  ;  and  in  a  moment  more  the 
occupants  had  begun  firing,  and  McKinney  was  outside  of 


*  See  on  this  affair  the  Transcript  and  Times  of  August  16th  and  17th, 
and  Dr.  Stillinan's  experiences,  Golden  Fleece,  pp.  176,  177 ;  also  see  the 
account  in  the  New  York  Tribune, 


AX  EPISODE  OF  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.    345 

the  house,  staggering  under  a  mortal  wound.  He  fell,  and 
in  a  short  time  was  dead.  That  the  firing  from  without 
soon  overpowered  all  resistance,  that  two  of  the  occupants 
of  the  house  were  shot  dead,  that  others  lay  wounded,  and 
that  the  assailants  shortly  after  took  possession  of  the  place 
and  searched  it  all  through,  not  sparing  the  sick  room  : 
these  were  very  natural  consequences.  After  about  an  hour 
the  arresting  party  left,  taking  with  them  four  men  as  pris- 
oners. Allen  himself,  sorely  hurt,  had  escaped  through  the 
darkness,  to  show  his  wounds  and  to  tell  his  painful  story 
in  the  mines. 

The  little  dwelling  was  left  alone  in  the  night  Nobody 
remained  alive  and  well  about  the  place  save  the  young  girl 
and  two  negro  slaves.  The  patient  lay  dying  from  the  shock 
of  the  affair.  For  a  long  time  the  girl,  as  she  afterwards  de- 
posed, waited,  not  daring  to  go  to  the  bar-room,  ignorant  of 
who  might  be  killed,  hearing  once  in  a  while  groans.  About 
ten  o'clock  a  second  party  of  armed  men  came  from  the 
city,  searched  again,  and  after  another  hour  went  away. 
"  Mrs.  Allen  died  about  the  time  this  second  party  rode  up 
to  the  house/1  deposes  the  girl.  She  had  the  rest  of  the 
night  to  herself.* 

The  city  was  not  reassured  by  the  news  of  the  Sheriff's 
death.  In  the  unlighted  streets  of  the  frightened  place,  the 
alarm  was  sounded  by  the  returning  party  about  nine 
o'clock.  Of  course,  invasion  and  fire  were  expected.  The 
militia  companies  turned  out,  detailed  patrolling  parties, 
and  then  ordered  the  streets  cleared.  The  danger  was 
imminent  that  the  defenders  of  the  law  would  pass  the 
night  in  shooting  one  another  by  mistake  in  the  darkness. 


*  Allen  was  a  Miwourian,  who,  like  other*,  had  brought  hi*  slave*  to 
California  at  a  venture.  The  Bute  Constitution,  when  once  the  8Ute  waa 
admitted,  made  slavery,  as  is  known,  impomible.  Allen  survived,  and 
found  his  way  back  to  Missouri  in  a  year  or  so.  I  there  lost  sight  of  him. 


346  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

But  this  was  happily  avoided.  The  families  in  the  town 
were,  of  course,  terribly  excited.  "  The  ladies,"  says  Dr. 
Stillman,  "  were  nearly  frightened  out  of  their  wits ;  but  we 
assured  them  that  they  had  nothing  to  fear — that  we  were 
devoted  to  their  service,  and  were  ready  to  die  at  their  feet ; 
being  thus  assured,  they  all  retired  into  their  cozy  little 
cottages,  and  securely  bolted  the  doors."  During  the  night, 
the  Senator  arrived  from  San  Francisco,  with  reinforce- 
ments. Lieutenant-Governor  McDougal  had  already  re- 
turned on  Thursday  from  Benecia,  bringing,  according  to 
the  Placer  Times,  muskets  and  cartridges,  but  no  United 
States  soldiers.  He  had  felt  seriously  the  responsibilities  of 
his  position,  and  had  accordingly  gone  to  bed,  sick  with  the 
cares  of  office. 

But  morning  came  peacefully  enough.  Quiet  in  exter- 
nal affairs  was  restored.  In  the  city  Sam  Brannan  and 
others  talked  mightily  of  law,  order,  and  blood.  There 
were,  however,  no  more  battles  to  fight.  In  a  few  days, 
quiet  of  mind  also  was  restored ;  people  were  ashamed  of 
their  alarm.  Squatters  confined  themselves  to  meetings  in 
the  mining  districts  and  in  Marysville,  to  savage  manifes- 
toes, and  to  wordy  war  from  a  distance,  with  sullen  sub- 
mission near  home.  The  real  war  was  done.  A  tacit 
consent  to  drop  the  subject  was  soon  noticeable  in  the 
community.  Men  said  that  the  laws  must  be  enforced,  and 
meanwhile  determined  to  speak  no  ill  of  the  dead.  There 
was  a  decided  sense,  also,  of  common  guilt.  The  commu- 
nity had  sinned,  and  suffered. 

Of  the  actors  in  this  drama  little  needs  further  to  be  nar- 
rated here.  Doctor  Robinson  disappeared  for  the  moment 
as  wounded  prisoner  in  a  cloud  of  indictments  for  assault, 
conspiracy,  murder,  and  what  else  I  know  not.  Mayor  Bige- 
low  was  taken  to  San  Francisco,  where  he  almost  miraculous- 
ly recovered  from  his  three  bad  wounds,  only  to  die  soon  of 
the  cholera.  The  squatter  movement  assumed  a  new  phase. 


AN   EPISODE  OP  EARLY  CALIFORNIA  LIFE.     347 

Doctor  Robinson,  indeed,  was  in  little  danger  from  his  in- 
dictments, when  once  the  heat  of  battle  had  cooled.  He 
was  felt  to  be  a  man  of  mark  ;  the  popular  ends  had  been 
gained  in  his  defeat ;  the  legal  evidence  against  him  was 
like  the  chips  of  drift-wood  in  a  little  eddy  of  this  changing 
torrent  of  California  life.  With  its  little  hoard  of  drift, 
the  eddy  soon  vanished  in  the  immeasurable  flood.  After  a 
change  of  venue  to  a  bay  county,  and  after  a  few  months' 
postponement,  the  cloud  of  indictments  melted  away  like 
the  last  cloudflake  of  our  rainy  season.  Nolle  pros,  was 
entered,  and  the  hero  was  free  from  bail,  as  he  had  already 
for  a  good  while  been  free  on  bail  to  recover  his  bodily 
health,  to  edit  the  previously  projected  squatter  newspaper, 
to  run  for  the  Legislature,  and  even  to  form  friendships 
with  some  of  the  very  men  whom  he  had  lately  been  assail- 
ing. In  a  district  of  Sacramento  County,  Doctor  Robinson's 
friends  managed,  with  the  connivance  of  certain  optimists, 
to  give  him  a  seat  in  the  Assembly,  that  late  "  advisory '' 
body,  whose  "  rules,"  before  the  admission  of  the  State,  he 
had  so  ardently  despised.  The  State  was  admitted  now, 
and  Doctor  Robinson  cheerfully  undertook  his  share  of  legis- 
lation. But  the  Legislature  cared  more  for  senatorial  elec- 
tion, and  such  small  game,  than  for  the  Higher  Law.  Doc- 
tor Robinson  was  not  perfectly  successful,  even  in  pleasing 
his  constituents.  Ere  yet  another  year  passed,  he  had  for- 
ever forsaken  our  State,  and  for  his  further  career,  you 
must  read  the  annals  of  the  New  England  Emigrant  Aid 
Society  and  the  history  of  Kansas.  I  have  found  an  account 
of  his  career  in  a  Kansas  book,  whose  author  must  have  a 
little  misunderstood  Doctor  Robinson's  version  of  this  old 
affair.  For  the  account  says  that  the  good  Doctor,  when 
he  was  in  California  in  early  days,  took  valiant  part  for 
the  American  settlers  against  certain  wicked  claimants 
under  one  John  Sutter,  who  (the  wretch)  had  pretended  to 
own  "  99,000  square  miles  of  land  in  California."  Alas, 


348  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

poor  Sutler,   with  thy  great  schemes!    Is  it  to  come  to 
this? 

I  cannot  close  this  scene  without  adding  that  a  certain 
keen-eyed  and  intelligent  foreigner,  a  Frenchman,  one 
Auger,  who  visited  our  State  a  little  later,  in  1852,  took 
pains  to  inquire  into  this  affair  and  to  form  his  own  opinion. 
He  gives  a  pathetic  picture  of  poor  Sutter,  overwhelmed  by 
squatters,  and  then  proceeds  to  give  his  countrymen  some 
notion  of  what  a  squatter  is.  Such  a  person,  he  says,  repre- 
sents the  American  love  of  land  by  marching,  perhaps 
"pendant  des  mots  enters,"  until  he  finds  a  bit  of  seem- 
ingly vacant  land.  Here  he  fortifies  himself,  "  et  se  fait 
massacrer  avec  toute  sa  familie  plutdt  que  de  renoncer  a 
la  moindre  parcelle  du  terrain  qu'il  a  usurped  *  This  is 
well  stated.  But  best  of  all  is  the  following  :  "  Celui  qui 
se  livre  a  cette  investigation  prend  des  lors  le  titre  de 
'  squatter,'  qui  vient,je  le  suppose,  du  mot  'square '  (place), 
et  signifie  chercheur  d*  emplacement."  It  is  evident  to  us, 
therefore,  that  Doctor  Robinson  and  all  his  party  were  "  on 
the  square."  And  herewith  we  may  best  end  our  account. 

*  Auger,  Voyage  en  Californie,  p.  154. 


XII. 
JEAN  MARIE  GUYAU. 

JEAN  MARIE  GUYAU,*  one  of  the  most  prominent  of  re- 
cent French  philosophical  critics,  and  one  of  the  shortest 
lived  amongst  those  philosophers  who  have  obtained, 
whether  by  critical  or  by  constructive  work,  any  considerable 
fame,  was  born  October  28,  1854,  and  died  March  31,  1888, 
at  the  age  of  thirty -three  years.  To  the  pursuit  of  philoso- 
phy he  was  determined,  not  only  by  temperament,  but  by 
his  earliest  home  training.  His  education  was  directed  by 
Alfred  Fouillee,  the  most  distinguished  constructive  philoso- 
pher of  contemporary  France.  Fouillee  was  the  cousin 
of  Guyau's  mother,  and  became,  by  second  marriage,  her 
husband,  and  Guyau's  step-father.  The  mother  is  known 
in  France  as  an  author  of  educational  works.  The  happy 
intellectual  conditions  that  resulted  from  this  union  show 
themselves  throughout  our  hero's  brief  career.  His  literary 
skill,  from  the  very  first  of  his  books,  is  that  of  the  expert ; 
his  scholarship,  from  this  beginning  on,  is  mature.  His 
eye  is  always  set  on  the  goal ;  he  has  but  to  run  the 
race,  and  no  longer  to  learn  the  art,  of  the  thinker,  after 
once  he  has  begun  to  show  his  powers.  His  opinions  de- 
velop ;  but  the  spirit  of  his  work  remains  substantially  the 
same.  His  pace  quickens,  his  feats  of  critical  skill  and  of 


*  A  paper  prepared  for  the  Cercle  Fran<;at«  of  Harvard  University. 
M 


350  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

speculative  imagination  grow  more  remarkable  as  he  pro- 
ceeds. But  what  one  sees  is  the  progress  of  the  man,  and 
never  the  maturing  of  the  boy.  Yet  Guyau's  first  book,  a 
memoir  of  some  thirteen  hundred  manuscript  pages  upon 
the  history  of  Utilitarian  Ethics  from  Epicurus  to  the  pres- 
ent day,  was  crowned  by  the  Academy  of  Moral  and  Politi- 
cal Sciences  in  1874,  and  had  been  written  in  the  previous 
year,  when  its  author  was  nineteen  years  of  age.  Its  two 
parts,  the  one  on  ancient  Epicureanism,  the  other  on  mod- 
ern English  Ethics,  were  later  published  separately,  and 
Guyau's  youthful  summary  and  criticism  of  the  contempo- 
rary English  ethical  movement  has  received  especial  praise, 
and  very  serious  consideration  both  in  France  and  in 
England. 

It  thus  becomes  at  once  plain  that  we  have  here  to  deal 
with  one  of  those  cases  of  early  promise  and  swift  develop- 
ment of  which  the  history  of  philosophy,  like  the  history  of 
poetry,  shows  us  a  number  of  instances.  Amongst  philoso- 
phers, Berkeley  and  Schelling  readily  come  to  mind,  by 
way  of  comparison,  as  we  consider  Guyau's  brilliant  youth. 
To  be  sure,  Guyau  is  not  to  be  set  beside  either  of  these 
men  as  regards  constructive  ability.  He  is  a  critical  essay- 
ist rather  than  an  originator  of  systematic  doctrine  ;  yet  in 
native  brilliancy  of  intellect  he  compares  well  with  both.  Of 
the  two  Schelling  the  more  resembles  Guyau  in  respect 
of  the  swiftness  and  manifoldness  of  literary  production. 
Schelling  was  born  in  1775,  began  to  write  for  publication, 
like  Guyau,  just  before  he  was  twenty  years  of  age,  and 
was  professor  of  philosophy  at  Jena  by  the  time  he  was 
twenty-two.  But  Guyau  has  one  trait  that  the  young 
Schelling  lacked,  namely,  speculative  self-control.  He  con- 
structs less  originally,  but  he  criticises  more  soundly. 
Schelling's  early  works  followed  one  another  like  lightning 
flashes,  each  one  striking  in  a  new  and  unexpected  place. 
Guyau  is  the  product  of  a  training  as  severe  as  it  was 


JEAN  MARIE  GUYAU.  351 

kindly  and  stimulating.  He  has  genius,  but  shows  no  way- 
wardness. He  covers  a  wide  range,  and,  as  just  said,  his 
opinions  develop.  But  he  does  not,  like  Schelling,  alter 
essential  features  of  his  whole  system  at  every  new  presen- 
tation. And,  in  fact,  as  just  observed,  Guyau,  except  in  his 
Ethics,  never  had  a  system.  On  the  other  hand,  by  the 
tendency  to  determine  all  that  he  has  to  say  through  its 
relation  to  a  few  central  and  persistently  elaborated  prob- 
lems, Guyau  reminds  us  of  Berkeley.  Like  the  young 
Berkeley,  Guyau  had  been  inspired  by  Plato.  Like  Berke- 
ley, Guyau  had  also  to  make  use  of  this  inspiration  in  deal- 
ing with  problems  and  interests  very  far  removed  from  those 
of  Plato  himself.  But  Guyau  differs  from  Berkeley  by  the 
wider  outlook  and  the  far  more  complex  character  of  his 
undertakings,  as  well  as  by  the  extent  of  his  learning, 
although  here  too  Berkeley  is  a  more  original  and  construc- 
tive thinker  than  Guyau. 

Both  Berkeley  and  Schelling  lived  far  past  the  period  of 
their  youthful  philosophical  Sturm  und  Drang.  Here 
Guyau  differs  from  both.  His  is  the  philosophy  not  only 
of  a  young  man,  but  also  of  a  doomed  invalid,  who  had 
indeed  his  intervals  of  physical  vigor  and  his  hopeful  years, 
but  whose  eyes  were,  almost  from  the  first,  accustomed  to 
look  death  in  the  face.  His  step-father,  who  has  put  on 
record  a  beautifully  clear,  faithful,  affectionate,  and  yet  per- 
fectly objective  account  of  our  thinker's  philosophical  de- 
velopment and  career,  until  his  death,  is  very  sparing  of 
biographical  detail,  and  I  do  not  happen  to  know  of  any 
account  of  the  nature  of  our  philosopher's  maladies.  It 
seems  to  be  admitted,  however,  that  his  early  intellectual 
labors  involved  a  physical  overstrain  which  certainly  did 
not  take  away  the  acutenesa  of  his  intellect,  but  which 
added  at  all  events  to  his  constitutional  or  acquired  burdens, 
and  hastened  the  end.  Yet  when  one  considers  what  the 
man  accomplished,  despite  his  fatal  maladies,  one  cannot 
24 


352  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

view  this  brief  career  without  feeling,  as  the  ancients  would 
have  felt,  that  there  are  many  ways  of  living  well  besides 
merely  living  long.  One  hears  much  of  overstrain.  Guyau, 
in  his  book  upon  Education,  wrote  himself  upon  the  sub- 
ject. Overstrain  is  a  bad  thing.  It  may  have  helped  to 
deprive  us  early  of  this  remarkable  man.  Yet  there  are 
young  men,  and  even  here  at  Harvard  I  have  known 
such,  who,  perhaps  in  order  to  add  prudently  to  their 
chances  of  intellectual  efficiency  in  old  age,  are  disposed  to 
sacrifice,  in  a  restful  way,  nearly  the  whole  of  the  intel- 
lectual opportunities  of  their  youth.  For  my  part,  I  regret 
to  see  men  throw  away  either  end  of  life.  But  when  one 
observes  that  Guyau's  permanently  useful  memoir  upon  the 
history  of  Utilitarian  Ethics  was  written  in  that  year  of  life 
which  here  in  Harvard  is  dedicated,  by  most  men,  to  the 
work,  and  even,  in  a  few  instances,  to  the  leisure  of  the 
Freshman  Class,  it  occurs  to  one  afresh  that,  as  Quintilian, 
I  believe,  said,  we  ourselves  are  the  ones  who  make  our 
lives  short.  At  all  events,  death  is  not  the  only  shortener 
of  life,  and  I  venture  to  think  that  if  more  of  our  American 
youth  were  to  labor  like  Guyau,  we  as  a  nation  could  well 
endure  even  a  certain  increase  of  the  death-rate  amongst 
scholars.  A  man  is  but  a  man,  and  if  you  call  a  life  wasted 
that  is  passed  in  invalidism  between  twenty  and  thirty- 
three,  and  then  ended,  still  be  willing  to  observe  with  me 
for  a  little  how  our  philosopher  wasted  away  this  his  bril- 
liant youth. 

I. 

Since  1870  France  has  been  the  centre  of  a  philosophical 
movement  which  as  yet,  to  be  sure,  is  not  of  the  first  grade 
as  to  originality  and  constructiveness,  but  which  certainly  is 
of  great  variety,  liberality,  courage,  and  fruitfulness.  Our 
first  interest  in  Guyau  is  in  his  character  as  a  representative 
of  the  general  tendencies  of  this  whole  French  national 
movement.  To  philosophize  extensively  and  successfully, 


JEAN   MARIE  GUYAU.  353 

whether  as  system-maker  or  as  a  critic  of  systems,  such  as 
was  Guyau,  you  must  combine,  first,  a  strong  love  of  life 
with  a  great  deal  of  critical  coolness ;  next,  a  considerable 
range  of  intellectual  vision  with  a  keen  eye  for  the  unity  of 
things  ;  and,  finally,  a  cautious  sense  of  human  fallibility — a 
power  to  doubt,  with  a  courageous  willingness  to  take  your 
risks,  and  even  to  make  your  blunders.  Now  the  first  of 
the  three  characteristics  thus  enumerated,  namely,  a  com- 
bination of  a  strong  love  of  life  with  a  critical  coolness  in 
observing  life,  appears  to  be  very  characteristic  of  the 
French  nature.  A  comparison  with  two  or  three  other 
philosophical  peoples  will  serve  to  make  the  fact  clearer. 
The  Hindoo,  as  a  philosopher,  has  always  been  a  keen  critic 
of  human  illusions,  but  since  it  chanced,  by  some  accident 
of  race-development,  that  the  Hindoo,  from  an  early  period 
of  his  evolution,  did  not  love  life,  Hindoo  philosophy,  ex- 
tensive as  are  its  literary  monuments,  is  in  essential  doc- 
trine always  very  brief  and  unfruitful.  Life  for  the  Hindoo 
is  an  ill ;  one  philosophizes  to  seek  salvation.  And  salvation 
lies  in  some  sort  of  absolute  contemplative  abstraction 
from  life — an  abstraction  which  you  can  define  in  many 
ways ;  but  the  goal  is  always  the  same — a  peace  that  passeth 
understanding,  and  that  flees  from  facts  to  the  Absolute  be- 
yond life's  illusions.  The  Greek,  on  the  contrary,  not  only 
criticised  life,  but  loved  it  His  philosophy  is  accordingly 
various,  complex,  and  extremely  fruitful.  Well,  Matthew 
Arnold  has  declared  the  French  to  be  the  Greeks  of  modern 
civilization,  and  Guyau  himself,  in  a  passage  of  his  most 
mature  book,  has  gladly  accepted  the  characterization.* 
Something  of  the  Hellenic  willingness  to  live — to  live  how- 
ever life  comes — to  live  first  and  to  be  scrupulous  only  in 
the  second  place — this  we  who  are  ourselves  of  a  more  hesi- 
tant and  scrupulous  race  generally  feel  to  be  characteristic 

*  L'lrreligion  de  PA  venir,  p.  215,  •??. 


;,,M  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

of  the  French  temperament.  Meanwhile,  if  the  Frenchman 
seems  to  accept  life  with  fewer  preliminary  scruples  and 
conscientious  inhibitions  than  those  to  which  we  are  early 
trained,  he  always  seems  by  nature  more  fearless  than  we 
in  dissecting  life  if  ever  he  chooses  the  thinker's  business. 
In  case  of  our  English  stock  our  consciences  often  seem  to 
make  us  fearful  of  thorough-going  and  deliberate  reflection, 
although,  strangely  enough,  the  very  essence  of  our  own 
conscience  is  a  sort  of  fatal  and  unpremeditated  reflection. 
If  a  man  merely  lives,  and  has  not  learned  to  think,  he  has 
no  conscientious  scruples.  But  if  thought  about  action 
arises  in  him  spontaneously  and  fatally,  as  a  sort  of  obses- 
sion, coming  he  knows  not  whence,  then  a  man  very  gener- 
ally becomes  hesitantly  conscientious,  scrupulous,  con- 
cerned about  his  motives  and  his  future,  disposed  to  inhibit 
his  instinctive  acts.  Guyau  himself  observed  this  tendency, 
and  expressed  it  in  the  psychological  principle  that  the 
consciousness  of  our  various  and  separate  instincts  is,  in 
general,  primarily  opposed  to  the  continuance  and  to  the 
strength  of  these  instincts  themselves.  Think  about  your 
pleasures  too  much,  and  they  will  please  you  less.  Guyau 
has  very  skilfully  used  this  principle  in  his  criticism  of  the 
English  utilitarian  ethics.  But  the  principle  frequently 
has,  in  case  of  our  English  temperament,  this  further  ex- 
emplification, that,  although  we  are  by  nature  and  early 
training  fatally  predisposed  to  conscientious  considerate- 
ness  and  to  consequent  inhibitions  of  our  instincts,  so  that 
we  get  our  native  hue  of  resolution  sicklied  o'er  with  the 
pale  cast  of  thought,  we  often  fear,  for  this  very  reason,  to 
let  even  our  considerateness  go  free,  in  its  own  way.  Very 
common,  in  our  race,  even  amongst  those  who  philosophize, 
is  the  sense  that  there  are  a  good  many  things  about  which 
you  must  not  philosophize  ;  that  there  are  questions  which 
you  must  not  ask ;  that  there  are  topics  which  you  must 
not  mention  even  in  philosophy ;  that,  in  short,  reflection 


JEAN  MARIE  GUYAU.  355 

and  considerateness  are  only  tolerable  where  they  them- 
selves come  upon  you,  with  the  force  of  instincts,  of  obses- 
sions, of  God-inspired  fate,  and  not  when  you  make  them 
a  deliberate  ideal.  From  this  point  of  view  it  seems  as  if 
you  might  not  dare  to  make  reflection  itself  anything1 
thorough-going,  to  think  for  the  sake  of  thinking,  or  to  be 
considerate  for  the  sake  of  mere  considerateness.  Con- 
science, which  inhibits  instincts  by  reflecting  upon  them, 
thus  in  the  end  often,  with  us,  tends  to  inhibit  even  itself  as 
the  instinct  to  reflect ;  and  in  consequence  you  will  often 
meet,  as  in  our  own  very  community,  with  people — sometimes 
very  noble  women,  sometimes  very  laborious  clergymen, 
sometimes  saintly  laymen  of  devoted  practical  life — who 
are  by  nature  essentially  and  fatally  thoughtful  people,  but 
who  nevertheless  pass  their  lives  in  thoughtfully  limiting 
and  restraining  their  own  disposition  to  think,  in  so  far  as 
such  thinking  would  involve  a  criticism  of  sacred  things, 
or  an  inquiry  into  too  central  recesses  of  our  nature. 

But  now  the  French  mind,  less  primarily  and  fatally 
scrupulous  than  our  own,  not  only  loves  life  with  fearless- 
ness, but  also  fears  not  to  think  critically,  when  the  time 
and  the  taste  for  thinking  chance  to  come— to  think  with- 
out any  scruples  as  to  the  extent  to  which  this  considerate- 
ness  may  be  allowed  to  go.  One  sees  this  essentially  fear- 
less tendency  in  every  page  of  Guyau.  To  think  is  an 
ideal :  well  then,  let  this  ideal  have  its  way,  just  as  if  it 
were  a  part  of  your  primal  love  of  life.  Nothing  is  so  sacred 
that  you  may  not  name  it,  bring  it  out  to  the  light,  scruti- 
nize it,  define  it  One's  considerateness  becomes  frankly 
quite  free  from  scruples.  But  as  Guyau  himself  maintains, 
in  defending  one  of  the  most  subtle  of  his  own  ethical 
principles,  this  very  willingness  to  make  thought  and  self- 
possession  an  ideal  may  be  the  best  way  to  escape  from  th.it 
primarily  paralyzing  tendency  which  wo  linve  just  Keen  to 
be,  in  our  own  cases,  the  first  consequence  of  rell<Ttion. 


356  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

The  man  of  instinct  acts  unscrupulously  because  he  has 
not  yet  learned  to  think.  When  he  begins  to  think,  if  he 
thinks  after  the  frequent  fashion  of  our  own  race,  he  be- 
comes conscious  of  his  instincts.  This  consciousness,  in  the 
first  place,  involves  a  sort  of  paralysis  of  instincts.  To  see 
why  you  acted  is  to  see  through  the  illusions  of  instinct. 
For  each  instinct  is  but  a  part  of  your  life,  and  as  such  is 
now  seen  to  be  opposed  to  some  other  part  of  life.  Knowl- 
edge brings  this  inner  disharmony  to  light.  You  lose  your 
naive  belief  iu  each  element  of  instinct  as  you  reflect  upon 
its  blindness,  and  upon  the  false  hopes  that  it  involved.  It 
hoped  to  realize  the  end  of  life.  But  life  is  larger  than  any 
desire,  and  every  individual  desire  is  seen  as  in  war  with 
others.  This  resulting  paralysis  may,  as  is  the  case  with 
the  conscientious  people  of  whom  I  have  just  spoken,  ex- 
tend itself  to  include  the  very  exercise  of  your  own  reflective 
powers.  Even  reflection  is  seen,  as  an  instinct,  to  oppose 
other  instincts.  You  learn  to  fear  life,  and  consequently 
to  fear  even  the  life  of  thinking.  But  now  go  further. 
Make  thinking  itself  your  ideal,  and  comprehension  for  its 
own  sake  your  goal.  What  is  your  result  ?  To  compre- 
hend life  wholly  would  mean  simply  the  conscious  and 
deliberate  judgment  of  every  instinct  and  desire  in  its 
relation  to  the  whole  of  life.  In  such  judgment  your  very 
guiding  principle  would  be  the  ideal  of  a  rational  and  com- 
prehensible harmony  of  your  life.  You  would  still  find  the 
individual  instinct  paralyzed  in  so  far  as  it  was  at  war  with 
the  unity  of  life ;  but  you  would  get  before  yourself  the 
ideal  of  bringing  desires  into  unity  with  one  another  and 
with  life's  plan  ;  and  this  ideal  would  itself  be  the  begin- 
ning of  a  new  life,  still  subject  to  the  laws  of  your  nature, 
but  organized  by  the  pervading  motive  which  your  reason 
determined.  Let  reason  have  her  perfect  work,  and  she 
will  suggest  to  you  new  and  positive  plans  of  life.  You 
will  no  longer  fear  life,  because  you  will  see  the  plan 


JEAN  MARIE  GJTYAU.  357 

of  a  way  out  of  the  conflicts  which  have  aroused  your 
fears. 

To  sum  up  so  far,  the  merely  scrupulous  join  to  their 
other  instincts  the  instinct  to  reflect  This  reflection  dis- 
covers the  conflicts  of  their  own  nature.  This  discovery  is 
paralyzing.  Moreover,  it  reacts  upon  their  very  reflective 
instinct,  and  makes  them  fear  to  think.  They  remain  per- 
manently in  a  state  of  thoughtful  inner  discord,  scrupulous 
and  yet  unwilling  to  scruple.*  In  such  a  state  of  mind  our 
own  racial  temperament  forces  some  of  us  to  live.  But 
there  is  the  other  way,  more  easily  followed  by  many 
who  are  less  fatally  doomed  to  be  scrupulous.  It  is  the 
way  of  first  finding  out  how  to  think,  and  of  then  letting 
thought  run  absolutely  free,  with  a  general  sense  that  no 
scruples  need  hinder  any  instinct  from  winning  its  rightful 
place.  But  thoughtful  ness,  thus  given  its  freedom,  may,  in 
happy  cases,  transcend  the  stage  in  which  it  merely  dis- 
covers inner  conflicts.  It  may  come  to  conceive  the  ideal 
of  a  complete  and  now  positive  harmony  of  reasonable  life. 
This  ideal  will  be  beyond  criticism,  because,  when  once 
formed,  it  proves  to  be  the  very  basis  and  presupposition  of 
all  criticism  of  life.  The  evil  about  desires  and  primary 
instincts  is  that  they  are  out  of  harmony  with  one  another. 
This  disharmony  is  what  reflection  first  shows  us.  What 
we  want  is  a  way  out  of  the  disharmony,  and  when  once 
thought,  allowed  to  grow  freely,  learns  to  define  this  want, 
thought  has  won  an  ideal  that  henceforth  justifies  the  most 
unscrupulous  use  of  our  insight,  because  whatever  stead- 
fastly means  to  make  for  harmony  can  never  itself  be  in 
essential  conflict  with  any  of  the  interests  of  the  life  that  it 
means  to  harmonize. 


*  For  •  claiwic  mutancc  of  the  resulting  poMibUitie*,  the  reader  in  re- 
ferred to  the  experiences  of  John  Bunyan,  as  recorded  ia  an  earlj  eatay  of 
tho  present  volume. 


358  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

I  have  stated,  and  already  in  very  much  the  way  of 
Guyau  himself,  an  ideal  of  the  work  of  thinking  which  has 
especially  good  chances  of  being  illustrated  in  the  work- 
ings of  the  French  mind.  The  French  mind  is  apparently 
able  to  win  the  true  freedom  of  the  reason  more  easily  than 
our  own,  just  because  the  Frenchman  carries  into  the  realm 
of  thought  that  gracious  readiness  to  let  himself  go  which 
is  at  once  his  glory,  and  his  danger.  In  baser  form  this 
unscrupulousness  of  critical  thinking  appears,  in  modern 
French  literature,  in  certain  well-known  and  cynical  out- 
growths with  which  Guyau's  whole  tendency  is  strongly 
contrasted.  But  it  is  the  privilege  of  those  who  love  life  to 
show  their  love  in  many  guises.  The  Frenchman  who 
loves  discipline,  order,  loyalty,  and  his  family,  can  express  all 
this  devotion  with  a  gracious  gaiety  unknown  to  those  who 
have  scrupulously  to  consider  every  love  before  they  quite 
know  whether  it  is  righteous.  On  the  contrary,  our  own 
conscientiousness  is  itself  often  the  parent  of  many  forms 
of  anarchy  and  confusedness.  Thus  many  of  the  more  un- 
happy incidents  that  accompany  our  modern  English  and 
American  movement — a  movement  admirable  on  the  whole 
— in  favor  of  an  improvement  of  the  destiny  of  women — 
many,  I  say,  of  the  accompanying  and  unhappy  incidents  of 
this  movement  appear  to  be  due  to  a  form  of  conscien- 
tiousness which  leads  certain  sensitive  women  to  feel  deep 
scruples  as  to  whether,  after  all,  one  is  doing  perfectly  right 
to  remain  a  woman  at  all,  since  that  is  only  an  accident  of 
blind  nature,  and  not  one's  moral  choice.  Well,  much 
safer,  in  a  way,  is  the  position  of  natures  that  are  not  pri- 
marily and  insistently  scrupulous,  and  that  love  to  let 
themselves  go,  if  only  their  love  chances  to  be  for  disci- 
pline, for  order,  for  loyalty,  for  the  family,  and  for  reason  as 
being  simply  the  noblest  of  one's  instincts.  And  this,  I 
say,  is  essentially  the  position  of  the  better  natures  that  to- 
day represent  French  philosophy — and  in  particular  of  a 


JEAN  MARIE  GUYAU.  359 

nature  like  Guyau's.  The  result  is  a  spirit  of  altogether 
enviable  freedom — of  freedom  disciplined,  critical,  rigidly 
devoted  to  law,  yet  still  of  joyous  freedom-r-a  spirit  which 
breathes  through  all  our  author's  work,  and  which  consti- 
tutes the  chief  charm  of  Guyau's  whole  manner  and  meth- 
od, whatever  may  be  his  problem.  He  is  a  man  who  fears 
nothing,  who  shrinks  from  no  topic,  however  delicate,  and 
who  still  never  runs  the  risk  of  feeling  any  morbid  interest — 
who  would  comprehend  all,  and  to  that  end  first  doubt  all, 
but  who  nevertheless  loves  construction,  duty,  and  the  ideal. 
In  many,  one  must  say  in  most  liberal  thinkers  who  write 
in  English,  one  feels,  in  their  stern  polemic,  or  else  in  their 
anxious  defense  of  their  rights,  in  their  very  conscious- 
ness of  their  merits,  how  with  a  great  price  they  obtained 
this  liberty.  But  Guyau  was  free-born.  And  in  this  respect, 
as  I  have  said,  he  is  only  one  culminating  point  in  the  re- 
cent French  philosophical  movement,  which,  in  all  of  its 
best  work,  is  characterized  by  this  union  of  the  spirit  of 
thorough  criticism  with  the  graciously  gay  French  love 
of  life. 

This  union  of  the  critical  spirit  with  the  love  of  life  I 
mentioned  above  as  the  first  condition  of  extensive  and  suc- 
cessful philosophizing.  The  second  condition,  also  men- 
tioned above,  is  the  union  of  a  considerable  range  of  intel- 
lectual vision  with  a  keen  eye  for  the  unity  of  things.  Now 
the  French  mind,  wherever  it  has  philosophized,  has  always 
shown  great  skill  in  swift,  exactly  statable,  and  highly 
unifying  generalizations.  The  defects  of  French  philosophy 
have  often  been  determined  in  former  periods  of  its  history 
by  the  one-sided  ness  of  the  individual  French  thinker's  view 
of  his  world.  The  Cartesian  doctrine,  the  Systbne  de  la 
Nature,  and  the  Positive  Philosophy  of  Comte,  are  all  of 
them  cases  of  this  one-gidedness  and  relative  superficiality 
of  thought.  Vast  regions  of  life,  accessible  to  his  day  and 
generation,  still  lie  below  the  horizon  of  the  man  whoso 


360  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

thought  would  encompass  the  whole  knowable  world.  His 
very  exactness  is  often  but  one  aspect  of  his  superficiality. 
He  analyzes  so  skilfully,  because  he  analyzes  but  a  very 
little.  He  states  so  exactly,  because  he  has  found  out  so  few 
things  to  state.  The  German  thinker,  on  the  other  hand, 
has  often  been  confused  by  the  wealth  of  the  life  that  he  has 
discovered.  His  generalizations  have  been  vast  and  many- 
sided,  but  so  obscure  that  either,  like  Kant,  he  spends  years 
in  elaborating  many  and  various  thoughts  as  wonderful  as 
they  are,  in  certain  regions,  mutually  inconsistent,  or  he  is 
driven,  like  Hegel,  to  invent  a  barbarous  tongue  in  order 
to  conceal  rather  than  to  reveal  his  deep  but  too  manifold 
meaning.  The  classic  German  philosophy  of  former  gener- 
ations is  a  realm  of  many-sided,  but  to  the  student  baffling 
paradoxes — a  labyrinth,  where  one  wanders  long  before  one 
even  conceives  the  goal.  French  philosophy,  as  it  has  been 
developed  in  former  times,  is  too  often  like  a  relatively 
bare  room,  full  of  electric  lights,  that  shine  with  brilliancy 
upon  a  few  diagrams,  which  pretend  to  be  a  picture  of  the 
universe.  A  similar  one-sidedness  has  held  in  case  of  much 
of  the  more  orthodox  and  official  French  thinking,  where 
freedom  gave  place  to  discipline,  and  that  was  taught  which 
officially  ought  to  be  declared  true.  Yet  in  the  midst  of  all 
these  defects,  the  French  have  at  least  always  stood  out 
for  clearness,  and  have  insisted  that  when  you  see  the  truth, 
you  at  all  events  see,  whereas  the  German  thinker  has  too 
often,  in  the  past,  baffled  the  untrained  student  by  at  least 
seeming  to  imply  that  if  you  want  to  see,  you  must  use 
some  wholly  new  sort  of  intuition,  and  must  lay  aside  once 
for  all  your  eyes. 

I  have  thus  spoken,  and  of  course  here  one-sidedly 
enough,  not  of  the  value,  but  of  the  defects  of  the  older 
sorts  of  philosophizing  in  France  and  in  Germany.  The 
strength  that  in  both  countries  has  gone  beside  these  con- 
trasting forms  of  human  weakness,  I  have  not  here  to  de- 


JEAN  MARIE  GUYAU.  301 

fine.  Enough  it  is  to  say  that  despite  this  past  history,  the 
present  day  no  longer  justifies  the  old  contrast  The  French 
philosophical  movement  since  1870  has,  on  the  whole,  been 
nowise  lacking  in  many-sidedness,  and  nowise  disposed  to 
the  older  superficiality.  In  fact,  of  late  years,  it  is  to  France 
rather  oftener  than  to  Germany  that  you  must  go  in  order 
to  enjoy  the  treasures  of  genuine  many-sidedness  and  of 
truly  philosophical  liberality.  For  contemporary  philo- 
sophical Germany  suffers  from  one  heavy  burden  from 
which  France  now  appears  to  be  free.  I  refer  to  the  burden 
of  academic  officialism.  In  vain  does  that  undertake  to  be 
free  thought  which  may  not  use  methods,  or  announce 
opinions,  which  a  current  university  tradition  declares  to  be 
opposed  to  the  Zeitgeist,  or  to  involve  the  appeal  to  an  ueber- 
irundenerStandpunkt — that  bogie  of  German  scientific  su- 
perstitions. And  one  cannot  read  current  German  philoso- 
phy, even  in  its  best  representatives,  without  feeling  more  or 
less  of  the  burden  of  these  current  academic  superstitions. 
Scherer,  in  his  history  of  German  Literature,  has  compared 
Germany's  repeatedly  exhibited  tendency  to  turn  her  back 
upon  the  ideals  of  her  own  past  to  Siegfried's  magic  forgetful- 
ness  of  Brynhild.  Yet  even  Siegfried,  in  the  days  after  he 
drank  the  cup  of  forgetful  ness,  did  not  boast  that  his  old 
love  for  Brynhild  was  nothing  but  an  u&berwundener 
Standpunkt.  And  there  is  often  something  pathetic  in 
to-day's  brutally  outspoken  neglect,  in  Germany,  of  the 
former  ideal  struggles  of  a  philosophy  whose  work  was 
indeed  imperfect  enough,  but  whose  problems  survive  de- 
spite all  the  efforts  of  contemporary  students  to  ignore  or 
independently  to  struggle  with  them,  as  if  they  were  not 
old  stories,  or  as  if  philosophy,  even  according  to  their  own 
confession,  did  not  live  in  the  history  of  philosophy. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  modern  French  movement, 
whatever  else  may  be  said  of  it,  is  free  from  superstitions, 
both  religious  and  scientific.  It  is  peculiarly  many-sided 


362  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

and  liberal.  If  it  is  not  yet  very  richly  constructive,  it  at 
least  does  not  fear  construction.  Its  representative  maga- 
zine, the  Revue  Philosophique,  was  for  years  the  world's  best 
philosophical  periodical.  The  most  manifold  interests  get 
here  a  hearing,  the  spirit  of  the  mere  school  is  at  a  mini- 
mum, the  relations  of  philosophy  to  all  human  interests, 
scientific,  ethical,  and  practical,  receive  the  best  represen- 
tation possible  under  existing  circumstances.  The  spirit 
shown  is  at  once  docile  and  original,  at  once  discreet  and 
hopeful,  at  once  constructive  and  historical. 

And  now  of  this  modern  movement  Guyau  himself  is  an 
admirable  representative  in  just  these  respects.  His  out- 
look is  wide,  his  desire  to  get  his  world  into  unity  is  strong. 
He  began  under  the  influence  of  Plato  and  Kant,  he  early 
experienced  to  the  full  the  significance  of  the  English 
schools,  he  remained  always  closely  in  touch  with  current 
psychological  investigation.  He  was  interested  in  ethics 
and  in  metaphysics,  in  aesthetics  and  in  educational  theory. 
He  shared  and  expressed  the  modern  interest  in  sociological 
problems.  His  general  view  of  life  is  a  sort  of  transformed 
Kantian,  or  even  Fichtean  ethical  idealism,  stated  in  a  mod- 
ern psychological  terminology,  and  modified  but  never 
wholly  overcome  by  its  ingenious  combination  with  a  be- 
lief in  modern  naturalism,  and  by  his  acceptance  of  a  some- 
what conventional  view  of  the  process  of  evolution.  His 
exquisite  intellectual  sensitiveness  kept  his  mind  open  to 
influences  of  the  most  varied  sort.  He  speculated  with 
equal  interest  upon  anthropological  problems,  such  as  the 
origin  of  religion,  and  upon  confessedly  transcendent  prob- 
lems, such  as  immortality.  For  him  the  first  duty  of  the 
modern  man  is  to  live  in  every  wise  sense,  to  live  open- 
mindedly,  many-sidedly,  and  considerately,  and  then  to  set 
down  as  he  can  the  meaning  of  life. 

I  mentioned  before,  as  the  third  prerequisite  of  philo- 
sophical success,  a  combination  of  a  cautious  sense  of  hu- 


JEAN  MARIE  GUYAU.  363 

man  fallibility  with  a  courageous  willingness  to  take  your 
risks,  and  even  to  make  your  blunders.  It  is  customary  for 
people  to  condemn  philosophy  because  it  risks  error  in 
dealing,  as  it  does,  with  transcendent  problems.  As  if  com- 
mon sense  did  not  risk  error  at  every  moment,  and  as  if 
common  sense  did  not,  at  every  moment,  deal,  and  very 
practically  too,  with  all  sorts  of  transcendent  problems — 
with  right  and  wrong,  with  truth  and  error,  with  appear- 
ances and  with  realities,  with  life  and  all  the  issues  of  life. 
The  philosopher  is  not  in  the  position  of  being  able  to  avoid 
the  risk  of  error  by  merely  ceasing  his  beloved  specula- 
tions. He  knows,  having  once  been  awakened,  that  he 
deals  with  the  problem  of  the  meaning  of  life,  and  that  he 
dealt  with  that  problem,  in  a  practical  way,  before  he  was 
awakened,  from  the  very  moment  when  first  he  per- 
formed his  least  act  He  knows  that  if  he  ceased  to  think, 
he  would  not  therefore  cease  to  err,  but  that  he  would  only 
err  more  blindly.  For  the  essence  of  error  lies  after  all  in 
the  falsity  of  your  mental  attitudes,  of  your  inner  deeds. 
All  thought  is  action,  as  Guyau  himself  loved  to  say ;  and 
all  action  implies  thought  When  one  thinks,  one  merely 
finds  out  the  meaning  of  one's  acts.  But  the  meaning  was 
there  before  one  reflected.  And  all  error  in  the  end  is 
practical,  just  as  all  practice  is  liable  to  the  penalties 
of  error. 

One  would  not  then  avoid  error,  nor  yet  its  consequences, 
temporal  or  eternal,  if  one  ceased  to  think  of  the  deeper 
problems  of  life.  The  philosopher,  unable,  as  fallible  man, 
to  avoid  the  risk  of  error,  merely  seeks  clearness.  Where 
others  blindly  go  right  or  blindly  err,  he  aims  to  make  out 
what  he  can  of  the  difference  between  true  living  and  false 
living.  Since  life  is  his  object  he  ought  to  fear  reflection, 
which  aims  to  give  life  unity,  as  little  as  he  fears  life  itself. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  nobody  knows  better  than  tho  phi- 
losopher what  risks  he  takes  when  he  thinks,  and  nobody 


364  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

ought  more  frankly  to  confess,  or  more  frequently  to  re- 
member, his  fallibility. 

And  now  the  modern  French  movement,  influenced  as 
it  is  by  the  spirit  of  recent  empirical  science,  is  at  once 
constructive  and  sceptical.  Guyau  himself  can  never  be 
ranked  amongst  the  system-makers,  and  is  in  nowise  as 
constructive  a  thinker  as  his  step-father  Fouillee.  He  was 
in  fact  too  cautious,  with  all  his  facility,  to  construct  ex- 
tensively until  he  had  gathered  together  his  materials. 
There  are  signs  that  had  he  lived  longer  he  would  have 
become  more  systematic.  As  it  is,  one  goes  to  him  not  for 
a  system,  but  for  far-reaching  and  ingenious  ideas,  which 
he  never  had  time  to  weave  into  one  whole.  These  ideas, 
as  I  said  before,  relate  indeed  to  a  few  persistently  central 
problems.  And  they  certainly  are  in  nowise  disconnected 
ideas.  But  before  Guyau  could  have  become  responsible  for 
a  systematic  doctrine  he  would  have  needed  to  devote  time 
to  some  fundamental  matters  which,  to  judge  by  the  topic  of 
one  of  his  latest  papers,  on  the  Origin  of  the  Ideas  of  Time 
and  Space,  he  was  just  reaching  when  death  cut  short  his 

task. 

II. 

I  have  thus  far  very  inadequately  treated  Guyau  merely 
as  a  representative  of  a  few  of  the  general  tendencies  of  the 
modern  movement  of  French  philosophy  since  1870.  I 
must  now  ask  you  to  consider  a  little  more  closely  the  man 
himself. 

One  who  was  no  special  student  of  philosophy  could  easily 
take  delight  in  Guyau's  books  for  the  sake  of  the  author's 
personality.  Our  thinker's  temperament  continually  and 
directly  gets  expression  in  his  work.  His  style  has  that 
quality  which  is,  once  more,  one  of  a  Frenchman's  not  ex- 
clusive, but  peculiarly  frequent  privileges — the  quality  of 
being  full  of  sentiment,  of  personal  experience,  and  of 
the  frankest  confession,  without  ever  seeming  to  approach 


JEAN  MARIE  GUYAU.  3C5 

what  we  ourselves  fear  as  mere  sentimentality,  or  scorn  as 
"gush."  The  man's  whole  personal  bearing  towards  his 
world  embodies  itself  before  you  as  plainly  as  if  he  were 
present  speaking  his  words ;  the  author  never  seems  to  note 
or  consciously  to  control  this  fact ;  yet  this  childlike  sim- 
plicity of  confession  is  as  free  from  awkwardness  as  from 
posing.  Every  confession  meets  the  author's  purpose,  but 
meets  it  without  premeditation,  without  any  painful  or  sus- 
picious self-consciousness.  The  person  who  speaks  to  you 
in  these  books  is  obviously  an  invalid,  who  has  suffered 
much.  He  is  accordingly  self-observant,  a  professional 
introspective  psychologist  Yet  he  is  never  morbid  in  his 
introspection,  never  takes  himself  too  seriously,  and  never 
even  likes  to  boast,  like  some  invalids,  of  the  dangers  he 
has  passed,  although  in  one  eloquent  passage  he  has  indeed 
occasion  to  mention  them.  His  enjoyment  of  the  beautiful, 
both  in  nature  and  in  art,  is  manifold  and  intense.  In  the 
intervals  of  his  invalidism  he  gives  himself  over  to  long- 
continued  physical  exercise,  finds  great  fascination  in 
mountain-climbing,  and  makes  frequent  use  in  his  discourse 
of  metaphors  drawn  from  life  amongst  mountains.  His 
sensory  life  is  very  wealthy  and  complex,  and  he  notes  the 
fact.  He  cannot  see,  for  instance,  why  the  prevalent  aes- 
thetic prejudice  declares  that  we  get  an  experience  of  the 
truly  beautiful  only  through  the  senses  of  sight  and  hear- 
ing. To  him  all  sensations  that  appeal  deeply  and  richly  to 
the  general  feeling  of  life  within  us,  of  life  in  its  wholeness, 
will  be  beautiful  in  so  far  as  they  heighten  rather  than  de- 
press this  feeling  of  life.  And  what  sensations  may  not, 
under  given  conditions,  possess  this  character.  "I  shall 
always  remember,"  says  Guyau,*  "  the  wonderfully  grateful 
sensation,  that,  in  the  heat  of  a  violent  fever,  was  produced 
in  me  by  the  touch  of  ice  upon  my  brow.  To  express  very 

*  ProbUmes  d' J-JitL<$tique  Contemporaine,  p.  61. 


3G6  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

feebly  the  impression  that  I  received,  I  can  only  compare  it 
to  the  pleasure  that  the  ear  experiences  in  finding  again  the 
perfect  chord  after  a  long  series  of  dissonances;  but  this 
simple  sensation  of  freshness  was  far  deeper,  more  grateful, 
and  altogether  more  aesthetic  than  the  passing  accord  of  a 
few  notes  exciting  the  ear ;  it  made  me  witness,  as  it  were, 
a  gradual  resurrection  of  the  whole  interior  harmony;  I 
felt  in  me  a  sort  of  moral  and  physical  pacification  that 
was  infinitely  sweet."  Nor  is  our  author  limited  to  the  ex- 
periences of  illness  when  he  wishes  to  illustrate  such  ex- 
traordinary aesthetic  effects :  "  One  summer  day,"  he  says,* 
"  after  a  tramp  in  the  Pyrenees  which  had  been  continued 
to  the  maximum  of  fatigue,  I  met  a  shepherd,  and  asked 
him  for  milk.  He  produced,  from  his  hut,  beneath  which  a 
brook  passed,  a  vessel  of  milk  that  had  been  plunged  into 
the  water,  and  kept  at  a  temperature  almost  ice-cold.  In 
drinking  this  fresh  milk,  into  which  all  the  mountain  had 
mixed  its  perfume,  and  whose  every  draught  gave  me  new 
life,  I  certainly  experienced  a  series  of  sensations  that  are 
ill-defined  by  the  word  agreeable.  It  was,  so  to  speak,  a 
pastoral  symphony,  tasted  instead  of  heard." 

The  rich  life  of  sensation  of  which  such  passages,  which 
are  frequent,  are  only  a  hint,  is  in  our  author's  case,  how- 
ever, first  of  all  supplemented  by  a  generous  wealth  of  the 
more  humane  emotions.  Guyau  is  evidently  an  admirable 
lover,  and  was  so,  we  are  told,  from  his  earliest  childhood. 
Fouillee  tells  us  that  Guyau's  youth  began  with  a  Platonic 
faith  that  love  is  the  soul  of  the  universe,  and  with  a  meta- 
physical doctrine  worked  out  upon  this  basis — the  world 
being  conceived  as  a  collection  of  beings,  conscious  and 
unconscious,  who  somehow  worked  together  in  the  bonds 
of  a  not  always  conscious  but  universal  love,  towards  the 
common  end.  Fouillee  also  calls  attention  to  one  of  Guy- 

*  Probldmes  d'JSsthdtique  Contemporaine,  p.  63. 


JEAN  MARIE  GUYAU.  3G7 

au's  own  passages  of  childhood  reminiscence:  "I  remem- 
ber," says  Guyau,  "  my  long  despair  the  day  when,  for  the 
first  time,  it  came  home  to  me  that  death  could  be  an  ex- 
tinction of  love,  a  separation  of  hearts,  an  eternally  mutual 
coldness ;  that  the  cemetery  with  its  stony  tombs  and  its 
four  walls  could  be  the  truth  ;  that  'twixt  to-day  and  to-mor- 
row the  beings  who  constituted  my  moral  being  could  be 
taken  away,  or  that  I  could  be  taken  away,  and  that  we 
should  never  be  restored  to  one  another.  There  are  certain 
cruelties  that  you  do  not  believe  in,  because  they  go  too 
far  beyond  you.  You  say, '  It  is  impossible,'  because  within 
you  feel :  "  How  could  I  do  that  ? " 

This  humane  tenderness  of  an  affectionate  nature  re- 
mains with  Guyau  to  the  end — never  paraded,  always  well 
controlled,  but  always  ready  to  find  such  expression  as  was 
consistent  with  the  thinker's  clearness  and  honesty.  The 
delights  of  a  happy  home-life  are  frankly  confessed  as  the 
climax  of  his  own  private  and  earthly  interests.  He  finds 
no  better  office  for  a  man  than  to  love  and  to  be  loved.  He 
was  himself  husband  and  father,  and  writes  as  from  his 
own  home,  in  which,  first  of  all,  he  is  minded  to  be  gay.  To 
be  sure,  love  is  not  only  a  gay  but  a  grave  thing ;  for  the 
shadow  of  death  is  constantly  present  to  the  invalid.  More- 
over, to  think  about  the  universe  means,  for  this  natural 
lover,  to  try  to  love  the  universe ;  and  in  face  of  the  mys- 
tery of  evil,  this  sort  of  love  is  a  grave  passion.  As  Guyau 
himself  expresses  the  matter  :  *  "  The  higher  metaphysical 
emotion,  like  the  higher  aesthetic  emotion,  is  never  clear  of 
a  certain  sadness.  The  day  comes,  when,  in  all  hearts, 
grave  and  even  painful  chords  will  awaken,  will  demand 
at  times  to  vibrate  as  they  once  vibrated  in  the  privileged 
hearts  of  such  as  Heraclitus  and  Jeremiah.  The  metaphysi- 
cal sentiment  cannot  exist  without  something  of  sadness,  as 


•  L'lrreligion  de  1'Avenir,  p.  8*7. 
25 


368  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

is  the  case  with  the  sublime  that  we  feel  ourselves  inca- 
pable of  ever  grasping,  or  with  doubt  itself,  or  with  that 
intellectual,  moral,  or  physical  ill,  which  always  mingles 
with  all  our  joys,  and  which  this  doubt  echoes  in  our  own 
consciousness.  From  this  point  of  view,  one  may  say  that 
there  is  a  measure  of  suffering  in  every  deep  philosophy,  as 
in  every  deep  religion.  .  .  .  One  day,"  our  author  continues, 
"  as  I  was  seated  at  my  desk  at  work,  my  love  came  to  me, 
full  of  concern  :  '  How  sad  your  brow ! '  she  said.  '  What 
troubles  you  ?  Tears,  alas !  Have  I  caused  you  grief  ? '  '  Ah, 
no,  what  grief  have  you  ever  caused  me  ?  I  am  weeping  at 
a  thought — nothing  more — yes,  at  a  thought,  in  the  air, 
abstract — at  a  thought  concerning  the  world,  concerning 
the  fate  of  things  and  of  creatures.  Is  there  not  in  the 
universe  enough  misery  to  justify  a  tear  that  seems  without 
an  object,  just  as  there  is  enough  of  joy  to  explain  a  smile 
that  seems  to  spring  from  nowhere  ? '  Every  man  may 
weep  or  smile  thus,  not  for  himself,  not  even  for  his  own, 
but  for  the  great  Whole  where  he  lives.  And  it  befits  man 
— this  conscious  solidarity  wherein  he  lives  with  all  beings 
— this  impersonal  pain  or  joy  that  he  is  capable  of  feeling. 
This  faculty  of  impersonal  izing  one's  self,  so  to  speak,  is  what 
will  remain  most  lasting  in  the  religions  and  in  the  phi- 
losophies, for  it  is  hereby  that  they  are  most  interior  to  our 
natures.  To  sympathize  with  all  nature,  to  seek  its  secret, 
to  want  to  contribute  to  its  betterment,  to  leave  thus  one's 
egoism,  in  order  to  live  the  universal  life — that  is  what  man 
will  always  do  merely  because  he  is  a  man,  because  he 
thinks  and  feels." 

Over  against  this  warmth  of  natural  experience,  this  rich 
life  of  sensory  and  emotional  tenderness,  there  stand,  in 
our  thinker,  two  very  marked  characteristics.  The  one  is 
a  love  of  order — a  love  very  freely  and  simply  expressed, 
but  very  potent.  This  man  has  the  invalid's  fondness  for 
regimen.  Joys  and  griefs  have  to  be  well-ordered.  He 


JEAN  MARIE  GUYAU.  369 

loves  experience ;  but  he  must  not  experiment  upon  his 
frail  constitution.  Once,  to  be  sure,  he  narrates,  very  mod- 
estly, how  for  a  while  he  tried  a  quasi-Buddhistic  experiment 
upon  the  art  of  attaining  Nirvana.  The  method  lay  in  re- 
ducing his  nourishment  to  a  few  cups  of  milk  instead  of  the 
usual  meals,  in  leading  a  life  of  abstraction  from  all  worldly 
concerns,  and  in  devoting  his  mind  to  u  abstract  meditation 
and  aesthetic  contemplation."  After  a  prolonged  period  of 
such  discipline  the  experimenter  reached  a  stage  that  was 
"  not  a  dream,"  but  that  was  certainly  very  remote,  he  says, 
from  ordinary  life.  Life  now  obtained  "  something  ethereal 
which  is  not  without  charm,  although  without  savor,  and 
without  color."  But  erelong  he  was  now  led  to  observe 
that  if  he  had  left  earth,  he  was  after  all  no  nearer  heaven. 
There  was  painlessness,  but  no  clearer  insight  Thought, 
even  the  most  abstract,  began  to  lose  its  outlines ;  and  so, 
after  some  stay  in  the  shadow  realms  on  the  very  confines 
of  peace,  where  even  the  last  desires  were  ceasing,  our 
philosopher  deliberately  returned  to  earth,  observing,  as  he 
says,  that  in  the  Pyrenees  the  best  paths  are  those  which  have 
been  worn  by  the  heavy  feet  of  the  asses.  As  in  the  moun- 
tains, so,  he  here  says,  in  life,  and  even  for  the  philosopher, 
the  best  rule  as  to  the  general  conduct  of  one's  earthly 
business  is  the  mountaineer's  motto:  "Follow  the  asses." 
They  do  not  understand  mountain  scenery,  nor  the  heavens 
above ;  but  here  on  earth  they  somehow  know  the  road. 

Apart  from  this  one  excess  of  severity  in  regimen,  our 
author  shows  us,  amidst  all  his  complexity  of  thought  and 
of  sentiment,  his  love  for  simplicity  and  clearness  of  liv- 
ing. And  now  the  other  trait,  which,  as  I  said  above, 
joins  with  this  love  of  order  to  characterize  our  thinker's 
attitude,  and  to  offset  the  natural  warmth  of  his  sentiments 
— is  a  very  strongly  practical  sense  for  the  application  of 
doctrine  to  business.  Guyau  thinks  for  the  world  ;  and  it 
is  his  practical  skill  that  goes  far  to  make  him  acceptable 


370  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

to  the  partisans  of  the  modern  spirit  as  such,  both  in  France 
and  elsewhere.  He  descends  readily  from  the  highest  prob- 
lems to  the  plainest  questions  of  the  day.  His  book  called 
Education  and  Heredity,  published  posthumously,  and 
known  to  our  own  public  through  an  English  translation, 
is  an  example  of  this  practical  disposition.  From  an  intro- 
ductory study  of  the  deepest  questions  of  psychology,  Guy- 
au  passes,  in  this  work,  to  a  detailed  discussion  of  the  con- 
temporary problems  of  both  physical  and  mental  training 
in  the  schools  of  France.  In  another  book,  that  upon  the 
future  of  religion,  Guyau  interrupts  extremely  subtle  and 
profound  philosophical  inquiries  to  introduce  a  vigorous, 
delicately  written,  but  extremely  practical  chapter  upon  the 
relations  of  religious  belief  and  unbelief  to  the  fecundity 
of  races,  with  especial  relation  to  the  recent  course  of 
events  in  France.  These  easy  transitions  from  theory  to 
practice,  from  central  issues  to  the  plain  of  daily  life,  are 
characteristic  and  noteworthy.  They  help  to  complete  the 
picture  of  this  vigorous  and  suffering,  gay  and  serious,  ten- 
der and  thoughtful,  cool  and  sensitive,  common-sense  and 
speculative,  essentially  manifold  personality.  You  will  not 
be  surprised  to  learn  that  Guyau  published  a  volume  of 
poems — Vers  d'un  Philosophe — poems  that,  so  far  as  I 
know  them,  seem  as  frank  and  simple  as  were  all  of  the 
author's  other  confessions. 

ill. 

The  philosophical  doctrine  that  resulted  from  the  work 
of  this  life  passed  through  stages  which  Fouillee  has  au- 
thoritatively summarized.  First  there  was  the  youthful, 
quasi-Platonic  metaphysical  hypothesis,  never,  as  you  will 
see,  wholly  abandoned,  of  the  world  as  a  community  of  be- 
ings, conscious  and  unconscious,  engaged  in  working  out 
an  ideal  upon  the  basis  of  an  universal  law  of  love.  This 
hypothesis  was  obviously  the  direct  result  of  Fouillee's  own 


JEAN  MARIE  GUYAU.  371 

influence  upon  his  step-son's  mind.  A  little  later,  the  study 
of  the  Utilitarian  moralists  culminated  in  a  careful  exami- 
nation of  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  Guyau  came  under 
Spencer's  influence,  absorbed  the  naturalism  of  the  day, 
and  accepted  the  physical  doctrine  of  evolution,  a  doctrine 
to  which  he  henceforth  remained  true,  although,  like  many 
other  modern  thinkers,  he  reserved  the  right  to  study  inde- 
pendently the  probable  metaphysical  meaning  of  the  pro- 
cess of  evolution  itself.  But  the  current  interpretation  of 
the  doctrine,  in  so  far  as  it  was  applied  to  the  problems  of 
ethics  by  Spencer  and  by  others,  seemed  to  him  from  the  first 
unsatisfactory.  His  own  ethical  views  never  lost  touch 
with  the  Kantian  influences  that  had  so  early  moulded  his 
mind.  He  was,  in  his  essential  features,  still  an  ethical 
idealist,  i.  e.,  a  man  disposed  to  interpret  the  universe  as  a 
realm  whose  significance  lies  in  the  ethical  ideals  that  its 
processes  realize.  Yet  he  had  meanwhile  become  converted, 
despite  this  fact,  to  the  current  modern  naturalism.  He 
was  deeply  impressed  by  the  apparent  indifference  of  nature 
to  the  ideals,  and  by  the  equally  obvious  isolation  and  in- 
significance of  man's  place  in  nature.  From  the  physical 
side,  it  now  appeared  to  him  only  too  plain  that  our  mo- 
rality, our  beauty,  our  ideals  in  general,  are  an  affair  of  the 
race,  not  of  the  universe.  Unable  to  overcome,  for  the 
time,  this  conflict  between  nature  and  the  ideals,  our  phi- 
losopher resolved  to  define,  at  all  events,  the  moral  world, 
and  proceeded  to  his  brilliant  essay  called  Esquisse  d'une 
Morale  Sans  Obligation  ni  Sanction,  where  the  view  of  our 
moral  nature  already  indicated  in  the  introduction  to  this 
paper  is  developed.  Man  is  now  defined  as  a  being  whose 
manifold  and  inherited  instincts  determine  all  his  natural 
conduct,  and  whose  intelligence  means  simply,  at  the  start, 
a  bringing  of  his  instincts  into  the  light  of  consciousness. 
There  is  no  intelligence  apart  from  some  sort  of  action. 
To  know  is  simply  to  be  aware  of  what  you  are  doing. 


372  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

But,  to  be  sure,  since  our  various  instincts  conflict,  we  no 
sooner  bring  them  to  the  light  of  consciousness  than  we 
find  ourselves  naturally  disposed  to  various  and  conflicting 
sorts  of  action,  egoistic  and  altruistic,  passionate  and  pru- 
dent, pleasure-giving  and  pain-producing.  The  first  result 
of  consciousness  is  therefore,  as  we  saw,  a  tendency  to  a 
certain  paralysis  of  conduct,  a  considerate  inhibition  of  our 
instincts,  because  we  have  found  them  out.  The  problem 
of  ethics  is  to  find  some  fashion  of  viewing  ourselves  that 
shall  relieve  us  of  this  sceptical  paralysis  of  instinct  by  con- 
sciousness. Older  ethical  writers  have  sought  to  solve  this 
problem  by  appealing  to  the  idea  of  our  obligation  to  God 
or  to  some  form  of  higher  law.  But  the  modern  man,  in 
order  to  be  ethical,  must  find  his  law  within  himself,  and 
mvst  not  even,  like  Kant,  seek  for  it  in  some  supernatural 
aspect  of  his  own  being.  Hence  the  now  ethical  doctrine 
must  teach  us  a  "Morale  sans  Obligation."  To  do  right 
must  come  to  mean  for  us  simply  doing  what  we  ourselves 
most  truly  desire  to  do.  But  just  so,  once  more,  former 
writers  have  sought  to  give  the  moral  law  an  external  sanc- 
tion, to  tell  us  to  do  right  in  order  that  we  may  be  made  happy, 
by  Providence,  or  by  the  rewards  of  our  fellow  men.  Yet, 
in  Guyau's  view,  true  morality  must  be  relieved  of  all  such 
external  sanction.  Right  must  mean  for  me  my  own  will, 
chastened  and  dignified,  no  doubt,  by  insight,  but  still  my 
own  very  will,  and  not  the  will  of  another. 

Well,  the  solution  of  the  problem  thus  set  for  the  ethical 
teacher,  Guyau  finds  in  a  very  originally  stated  form  of  a 
doctrine  which  many  others  have  in  recent  times  taught,  and 
which  is,  after  all,  the  Kantian  ethic,  much  as  Fichte  re- 
stated it,  but  then  translated  into  a  terminology  more  in 
accord  with  the  spirit  of  modern  naturalism.  What  every- 
body wants,  after  all,  is  life — intense  life,  brqad  life,  deep 
life.  For  this  fullness  of  life  instinct  blindly  gropes.  This, 
too,  our  reason,  even  at  the  moment  when  consciousness, 


JEAN  MARIE  GUYAU.  373 

bringing  to  light  the  one-sidedness  of  the  individual  in- 
stinct, paralyzes  the  instinct  by  detecting  its  conflict  with 
the  rest  of  our  nature — this  fullness  of  life  our  reason  even 
then  desires.  For  reason,  like  every  state  of  intelligence, 
is  simply  the  coming  to  consciousness  of  some  mode  of  ac- 
tion. When  life  as  a  whole  comes  into  the  light  of  con- 
sciousness, this  means  simply  that  we  no  longer  blindly 
desire  life  as  a  whole,  but  are  aware  that  we  desire  life. 
Not  otherwise  can  we  become  conscious  of  our  life.  For  all 
knowing  is  simply  doing  lighted  up  by  consciousness.  All 
ideas  involve  acts.  When  you  learn  to  see,  what  you  see, 
within  yourself,  is  simply  your  own  mode  of  activity.  Ac- 
cordingly, to  know  life  as  a  whole  is  consciously  to  love 
life  as  a  whole.  If  the  single  instinct,  now  become  a  con- 
scious desire,  wars  with  the  whole  of  life,  our  interest  in 
life's  wholeness  now  consciously  demands  that  the  rebel- 
lious special  desire  be  subordinated,  that  our  wants  take  on 
the  form  of  wholeness,  that  life  be  harmonized,  and  that 
the  desire  for  more  life,  for  more  harmonious  extended,  and 
intense  life,  become  the  law  of  our  being,  ruling  over  special 
desires,  putting  them  down  if  need  be,  giving  life  a  plan, 
fulfilling  the  end  of  the  Self  in  its  wholeness.  Such  a 
consciousness  is  that  of  our  so-called  reason.  It  invents 
no  supernatural  mysteries.  It  simply  counsels  harmony 
of  growth.  To  be  sure,  I  am  not  now  harmonious.  Yes, 
but  I  can  become  so.  I  can,  and  therefore  I  ought  This 
consciousness  of  the  power  to  make  the  love  of  life  in  its 
wholeness  victorious  over  special  and  subordinate  aims  is, 
as  Guyau  maintains,  the  true  form  of  the  moral  con- 
sciousness. 

For  the  rest  this  moral  consciousness  is  theoretically 
defensible  only  because  it  consents  to  be  more  than  merely 
theoretical.  Kant's  error  lay  in  appealing  to  pure  reason, 
without  noting  that  the  pure  reason,  viewed  merely  as  an 
abstract  source  of  law,  would  be  empty.  Action  is  preliini- 


374  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

nary  to  theory,  and  survives  mere  theory.  The  truth  of 
Kant's  Categorical  Imperative  of  the  so-called  pure  reason 
lies  in  the  fact  that  the  desire  for  life  in  its  wholeness  is 
more  fundamental  than  any  special  desires.  To  become 
conscious  that  what  one  wants  is  life,  in  all  its  fullness, 
intensity,  and  unity,  is  to  become  conscious  of  a  categorical 
imperative  superior  to  all  particular  aims,  such  as  the  aim 
of  pleasure.  Here  then  is  at  once  the  truth  and  the  correc- 
tion of  Kant's  view. 

But  this  love  of  life  has  its  social  as  well  as  its  individ- 
ual significance.  The  ordinary  separation  of  the  ego  from 
the  rest  of  the  world  depends  upon  an  essentially  false 
classification,  which  our  blindness  often  makes,  but  which 
nature  ignores.  Man's  organism  is  already  within  itself,  as 
Guyau  loves  frequently  to  point  out,  a  society,  a  combined 
group  of  living  cells,  which  cooperate  in  order  to  carry  out 
the  end  of  all.  And  by  nature,  this  cell -colony  which  con- 
stitutes for  each  one  of  us  our  organism,  is  linked  in  the 
most  manifold  and  real  ways  to  the  other  organisms  about 
us.  One  cannot  first  live  for  himself,  and  then  for  others. 
To  live  his  own  life  is  to  recognize  his  organic  relationship 
to  his  fellows.  My  desire  to  love  is  as  much  a  part  of  my 
own  inner  life-interest  as  is  my  desire  to  eat.  If  I  want  to 
live  largely,  intensely,  and  in  unity,  I  want  to  live  a  life 
that  cannot  be  conceived  alone.  I  want  to  love  largely,  in- 
tensely, harmoniously.  Were  pleasure  my  goal,  I  could 
ask,  how  much  pleasure  will  loving  acts  give  me  person- 
ally. But  if  I  want  just  to  live,  for  life's  sake,  I  can  no 
longer  separate  my  own  life  from  the  common  life.  The 
richest  interior  life,  as  for  instance  the  life  of  thought,  is  at 
the  same  time  the  life  that  is  most  obviously  social.  I  can- 
not think  alone.  I  can  only  think  with  others.  If  I  want 
to  live  the  thinker's  life,  I  must  then  make  it  part  of  my 
aim  that  there  should  be  other  thinkers  in  my  world,  my 
equals,  whose  ideas  are  as  valuable  to  me  as  my  own,  and 


JEAN  MARIE  GUYAU.  375 

whose  mental  advantage  is  as  much  a  part  of  my  goal  as  is 
my  own  intellectual  growth.  All  communication  is  social, 
if  you  will  altruistic.  It  is  done  for  the  sake  of  those  to 
whom  I  speak.  But  it  is  also  done  for  my  own  sake,  since 
utterly  uncommunicative  thought  quickly  comes  to  mean 
nothing.  To  think  is  already  to  speak  interiorly  to  some 
conceived  companion.  Thus  life  and  action  exist  only 
through  their  fecundity.  Mere  egoism  is  self -mutilation. 
Life  is  expansive,  goes  beyond  itself,  lives  in  social  rela- 
tions, is  best  for  me  within,  when  it  is  best  expressed  for 
those  without.  Or  again,  I  live  best  when  I  do  work.  But 
work  means  the  production  of  fruit  that  my  social  fellows 
enjoy. 

In  such  fashions,  which  could  be  indefinitely  illustrated, 
Guyau  undertakes  to  give  his  ethics  of  life,  or,  as  many 
would  prefer  to  say,  of  self-realization,  an  essentially  socio- 
logical turn.  The  more  our  philosopher  proceeded  in  his 
work,  the  more  his  formulas  became,  in  fact,  sociological. 
His  posthumous  book  on  Education  and  Heredity  is  con- 
ceived in  this  sociological  spirit  The  problem  of  the  in- 
tense and  harmonious  life  is  to  be  solved,  for  the  individual 
as  for  the  race,  for  the  philosopher  as  for  the  educator,  by 
laying  stress  upon  the  fact  that  man  is  born  for  the  richer 
experiences  of  companionship,  and  can  solve  the  problem 
of  his  own  destiny  only  by  recognizing  to  the  full  his  soli- 
darity with  all  men.  Only  he  who  loves  most  lives  most 
Hence  no  egoistic  consciousness  can  be  successful  in  the 
pursuit  of  its  true  aim,  which,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
is  life  in  its  fullness. 

The  charm  of  these  ideas,  as  Guyau  presents  them,  lies 
in  the  originality,  not  of  their  essential  contents,  but  of 
their  form,  and  of  the  manner  of  their  presentation.  Such 
truths  get  a  new  meaning  whenever  they  come  as  the  em- 
bodiment of  the  more  personal  experience  of  a  man  of 
original  temper.  The  book  now  before  us  is  the  work  of 


376  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

a  man  of  twenty-nine.  The  union  of  vigor  with  sim- 
plicity, of  vitality  with  clearness,  of  naturalism  with 
idealism,  of  youth  with  mature  though tfulness,  are  thor- 
oughly characteristic  of  the  author's  position  and  quality. 
As  Guyau  now,  in  1885,  turned  from  morals  to  his  wider 
philosophical  interests,  he  saw  immediately  before  him, 
amongst  the  countless  tasks  which  awakened  his  ambition, 
three  that  he  had  time  in  some  measure  to  accomplish  be- 
fore his  death.  One  of  these  was  the  topic  of  a  posthumous 
work,  namely,  that  on  Education  and  Heredity,  already 
mentioned.  Another  was  the  problem  of  ^Esthetics,  which, 
in  Guyau's  mind,  is  closely  associated  with  that  of  morals, 
for  if  the  ethical  ideal  is  the  attainment  of  the  fullness  of 
life,  the  aesthetic  pleasure  is,  according  to  Guyau,  the  en- 
joyment, through  sympathy,  of  the  contemplation  or  the 
presence  of  life.  In  his  own  words  :  "  To  live  a  full  and 
strong  life  is  already  aesthetic ;  to  live  an  intellectual  and 
moral  life,  is  beauty  carried  to  its  maximum,  and  therein 
also  is  the  supreme  delight.'1  The  beautiful  is  "  a  percep- 
tion or  an  action  that  stimulates  in  us  life  in  all  its  three 
forms  at  once  (sensibility,  intelligence,  and  will),  and  pro- 
duces pleasure  by  the  swift  consciousness  of  this  general 
stimulation."  In  consequence,  the  beautiful  is  such  be- 
cause, on  the  one  hand,  it  awakens  in  us  "  the  deepest  sensa- 
tions of  our  nature,"  while  on  the  other  hand  it  appeals 
"  to  the  most  moral  sentiments  and  the  loftiest  ideas  of  the 
mind."  The  study  of  aesthetics  has  thus  for  Guyau  an 
extremely  practical  aspect.  And  the  sociological  impor- 
tance of  the  beautiful  is,  in  his  eyes,  rendered  all  the  greater, 
not  only  by  this  close  relation  of  the  beautiful  (as  that 
which  appeals  to  our  deepest  sense  of  life)  to  the  moral 
(as  that  which  depends  upon  making  life  an  ideal) — not 
only  by  this  relation — but  also  by  the  fact  that  in  mod- 
ern times  the  beautiful  must  more  and  more  be  depended 
upon  to  take  that  inspiring  place  as  the  moral  awak- 


JEAN  MARIE  GUYAU.  377 

ener  of  men  which  in  the  past  has  been  taken  by  dogmatic 
religion. 

The  third  problem  which  Guyau  had  still  time  to  treat, 
he  dealt  with  in  his  very  remarkable  book  L'Irreligion  de 
1'Avenir — another  of  his  "sociological  studies,"  and  his 
strongest  work. 

The  title  of  this  book  easily  misleads  any  one  who  has 
not  come  to  know  our  thinker's  childlike  simplicity,  and 
transparent  honesty  of  speech.  One  may  well  doubt  whether 
he  is  right  in  maintaining,  as  he  does,  that  his  own  view  is 
essentially  irreligious,  or  that  the  future  to  which  he  looks 
forward  is,  even  in  his  own  account  of  its  destiny,  in  any 
proper  sense  a  future  of  "  irreligion."  The  matter  is  large- 
ly one  of  words.  But  Guyau  loves  frankness  so  much  that 
he  had  rather  lay  stress  in  his  title  upon  his  differences  with 
tradition,  than  arouse  false  expectations  by  an  appearance 
of  conformity.  These  are  matters  that  every  man  must 
decide  for  himself.  If  Guyau's  opinions,  as  here  expressed, 
were  my  own,  I  should  unhesitatingly  call  them  religious, 
for  the  reason  that  I  should  then  see  in  them,  as  he  himself 
sees,  the  fulfillment,  in  reasonable  form,  of  what  the  reli- 
gious instinct  of  humanity  has  been  seeking.  For  the  rest 
this  volume  breathes  everywhere  that  spirit  of  spiritual  un- 
conventionality  which,  as  I  must  confess,  seems  to  me  one  of 
the  first  qualities  that  the  philosopher  ought  to  cultivate  in 
relations  with  the  universe.  To  love  law,  is  not  to  love 
convention  as  such.  To  accept  convention  in  one's  daily 
life  amongst  men  is,  within  certain  limits,  the  ordinary 
business  of  the  loyal  citizen.  But  your  relations  with  the 
universe,  with  the  truth,  with  the  absolutely  ideal,  are  sim- 
ply not  conventional.  And  that  is  precisely  why  some  of 
us,  even  if  we  love  both  the  name  and  the  universal  cause 
of  religion,  may  find  outward  and  personal  conformity 
to  the  mere  accidents  of  current  religious  convention 
personally  repugnant,  and  distinctly  depressing  to  our 


378  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVTL. 

best  concerns,  so  that,  however  much  we  sympathize, 
still  outwardly  such  amongst  us  must  stubbornly  decline 
to  conform.  For  with  God — even  when  he  appears  to  your 
insight  through  the  thin  and  transparently  fragile  veil  of 
every  human  thought  and  relation — with  God  as  he  is  in 
himself,  you  have,  in  a  certain  sense,  to  be  alone,  especially 
if  you  reflectively  and  independently  think  out  for  yourself 
what  you  take  to  be  your  relation  to  him.  Consequently 
it  is  in  one  way  with  God  as  it  is  with  death,  and  with  love. 
These  exist  for  all  men  ;  yet  into  each  man's  life  they  come 
as  in  some  sense  incommunicably  his  own.  Of  course  you 
may  tell  this  or  that  about  them  if  you  will.  Speech  is 
free.  Thought  has,  as  thought,  no  secrets.  The  way  to  the 
truth  is  open  to  all,  and  is  to  be  publicly  heralded  and 
discussed.  But  your  own  sight  of  the  truth  when  you  see 
it — nobody  else  has  or  can  have  just  that.  You  and  your 
truth,  at  the  moment  of  insight — you  are  alone  together,  in 
one  harmony  of  appreciation  not  elsewhere  attained  in  the 
universe.  And  now,  this  being  so,  one  has  a  right  to  be 
sensitive  as  to  the  essentially  lonely  freedom  of  this  one's 
union  with  the  truth.  It  is  a  marriage.  If  any  given  con- 
ventional mingling  with  others  who  are  or  who  take  them- 
selves to  be  in  presence  of  that  truth,  chances  to  jar  on 
one's  private  sensibilities,  not  because  one  fails  to  love  one's 
fellows,  but  because  one  does  not  love  the  note  they  strike, 
one  has  here  an  absolute  right  to  one's  private  taste.  The 
world  has  a  right  to  your  service,  but  never  to  your  reli- 
gious conformity.  That  is  due  to  God  alone,  and  you  can 
only  express  it  in  your  personal  way.  If  a  given  outward 
and  worldly  conformity  chances  to  inspire  you,  you  are 
welcome  to  it.  But  then  that  is  merely  your  temporal 
accident.  In  the  eternal  world  there  are  countless  worship- 
pers and  servants,  but  there  are  no  conventional  religious 
ties.  Such  worldly  ties  are  the  mere  trappings,  and  the 
suits  of  the  religious  insight,  which,  in  itself,  passeth  show. 


JEAN  MARIE  QUYAU.  379 

Now  in  these  last  words  I  have  spoken  of  course  for 
myself,  and  not  for  Guyau.  His  religious,  or,  as  he  would 
say,  in  his  simple  fashion,  his  irreligious  insight,  is  not  that 
of  a  metaphysical  idealist,  but  rather  that  of  a  merely  ethi- 
cal idealist.  He  takes  nature,  to  the  end,  much  more  seri- 
ously than,  in  our  philosophy,  some  of  us  are  disposed  to 
do.  But  the  sense  in  which  I  find  myself  agreeing  with  the 
tone  of  Guyau 's  book,  even  on  its  negative  side,  is  deter- 
mined for  me  by  this  spiritual  unconventionality  which  has 
led  him  to  choose  his  title.  By  irreligion  he  means,  after 
all,  little  but  unconventionality  in  one's  religion.  In  the 
future,  he  holds,  men  will  differ  as  widely  as  now  in  opinion, 
they  will  never  give  over  speculating  upon  the  eternal  prob- 
lems, and  they  will  love  the  ideals  and  consciously  ful till 
the  harmony  of  life  better  than  we  do.  But  they  will 
lay  aside  both  the  authority  of  dogma  and  the  forms  of 
conventional  religion.  They  will  reason  together,  live  to- 
gether, observe  together,  but  every  man  will,  in  the  end, 
aim  to  see  the  truth  with  his  own  eyes.  That  men  can 
learn  to  live  in  this  way  without  losing  the  very  aims 
which  the  religious  consciousness  in  the  past  has  pursued — 
this  is  Guyau's  thesis.  He  defends  it  by  a  series  of  brilliant 
analyses,  full  of  learning,  ingenuity,  criticism,  kindliness, 
and  hope. 

First  comes  a  briefly  sketched  theory  of  the  religious 
history  of  humanity.  The  motive  for  the  development  of 
the  religious  consciousness  was  primarily  dependent  upon 
the  psychological  nature  of  the  social  consciousness  of 
man.  Having  in  an  especially  clear  and  vivid  fashion  the 
idea  of  human  fellow-beings,  man,  as  a  social  creature,  was 
peculiarly  predisposed  to  use  this  central  idea  of  his  con- 
sciousness as  a  means  of  interpreting  nature.  Hence  he 
easily  saw  comrades,  enemies,  and  masters  all  about  him. 
The  world  of  spirits,  and  later  the  gods,  consisted  of  the 
members  of  an  enlarged  society,  of  a  society  formed  in  the 


380  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

image  of  human  society.  Not  so  much  anthropomorphism 
as  "  sociornorphisin "  is  the  principle  that  determines  the 
contents  and  the  growth  of  religious  faiths.  In  time,  civil- 
ized man,  just  as  he  learns  to  live  in  orderly  and  organized 
political  bodies,  learns  to  conceive  his  gods  as  in  orderly 
and  organized  relations  to  himself.  The  constitution  of  his 
ideal  religious  state  gets  definitely  conceived,  just  as  his 
own  political  constitutions  come  gradually  to  his  conscious- 
ness. The  result  is  a  series  of  highly  determinate  and 
elaborate  social  relations  to  the  gods — relations  which  are 
expressed  in  myth,  in  cultus,  and  at  length  in  dogma.  The 
religious  world  is  the  world  of  a  mythical  social  order. 

But  this  elaborate  sociological  structure,  viewed  in  the 
light  of  a  larger  knowledge  of  nature  and  of  man,  appears 
in  every  case,  first  as  an  accidental  product  of  given  historical 
conditions,  which  produce  one  set  of  conceptions  in  one 
region  and  another  in  another — and  then  as  a  product  not 
of  the  scientific  study  of  nature,  but  of  the  sociological 
imagination  of  man.  Hence,  in  the  long-run,  every  deter- 
minate mythology,  rite,  and  dogma,  must  be  doomed ; 
and  for  the  truth  one  must  turn  to  science  and  to  specu- 
lation. 

Science  ,when  we  appeal  to  her  for  light,  shows  us  not  the 
ultimate,  but  only  the  partial  truths.  She  does  reveal  to  us 
that  apparent  indifference  of  nature  before  mentioned.  But 
hereby  science  only  whets  our  appetite  to  know  the  final 
truths,  which  science  as  such  cannot,  at  least  at  present, 
hope  to  bring  within  the  range  of  experience. 

There  remains  speculation.  Speculation  involves  risk  of 
error  at  every  step,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  speculation  is 
the  expression,  in  theoretical  terms,  of  that  very  love  of  life, 
boundless  and  ideal,  which  we  have  already  seen  to  be  the 
soul  of  morality.  As  a  limitless  expansion,  guided  by  rea- 
son, but  incapable  of  being  cut  off  at  any  point  by  any 
rational  interest,  is  what  the  self,  as  it  becomes  conscious, 


JEAN  MARIE  GTJYAU.  381 

sets  before  itself  as  the  practical  business  of  life,  so  a  con- 
stant striving  to  pierce  behind  the  veil,  and  to  find  out  the 
mysteries  of  truth,  is  the  inevitable  theoretical  business  of 
the  awakened  mind.  We  cannot  yet  know.  We  must  hope 
to  know.  This  is  the  way  in  which  theory  expresses  what 
our  practical  consciousness  puts  in  the  form  of  the  principle : 
We  are  not  yet  fully  living ;  but  we  must  hope  and  strive 
to  live  more  and  more  intense,  and  organized,  extended,  and 
harmonious  lives.  Consequently,  while  Guyau  apparently 
does  not  expect  that  exact  science  will  at  any  definable  time 
replace  our  speculation,  he  does  believe  that,  so  long  as  exact 
science  is  incomplete,  men  may  and  must  speculate,  and  that 
therefore  the  decay  of  faith  will  never  involve  the  cessation 
of  philosophy.  The  eternal,  the  ideal,  will  always  be,  next 
to  life  itself,  our  strongest  interest 

Our  actual  speculations  must  of  course  be  guided  by 
probability.  The  task  of  the  philosopher,  in  reviewing  the- 
ories, is  to  find  which  of  the  theories  proposed  is  the  most 
consistent,  both  with  experience,  and  with  itself.  With 
ready  skill  Guyau  reviews  a  number  of  the  best  known  of 
the  world's  metaphysical  hypotheses.  Dualistic  theism  dis- 
contents him  ;  the  optimistic  pantheism  of  Spinoza  and  the 
pessimistic  pantheism  of  Schopenhauer  and  von  Hartmann 
are  alike  rejected  as  inadequate  expressions,  both  of  the 
place  of  evil  in  the  world  and  of  the  facts  of  evolution.  A 
metaphysic  that  in  the  present  day  is  to  be  plausible  in  the 
light  of  experience,  and  in  view  of  the  demands  of  our 
thought,  must  take  account  both  of  the  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tion, and  of  the  sociological  constitution  of  those  regions  of 
reality  best  known  to  us  men.  The  religions  have  been 
wrong  in  their  dogmatic  sociomorphism,  which  has  filled 
the  universe  with  arbitrarily  imagined  social  structural. 
They  have  probably  not  been  wrong  in  conceiving  of  the 
universe  as  substantially,  after  all,  a  social  order,  where,  as 
in  our  own  case,  beings  develop  from  unconscious  isolation 


382  STUDIES  OP  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

to  conscious  and  social  unity  and  harmony  of  life.  A  the- 
ory, closely  related  to  that  of  Fouillee,  and  intimately  re- 
lated to  Guyau's  own  sociological  interests,  is  thus  pro- 
pounded as  the  most  likely  interpretation  of  the  universe. 
The  world  is  one  of  evolution  from  unconscious  to  con- 
scious will,  with  a  growing  solidarity  of  interest  amongst 
the  members  of  any  groups  that  thus  evolve.  The  appar- 
ent indifference  of  nature  is  very  possibly  illusory.  The 
universe  is  doubtless  full  of  life,  and  the  sociological  rather 
than  the  mechanical  view  of  the  nature  of  being  has  the 
better  chance  of  being  true. 

Meanwhile,  as  we  are  now,  every  man  of  us,  loving  life, 
wants  immortality.  Have  we  any  right  to  hope  for  such  a 
fortune  ?  Once  come  to  regard  the  universe,  as  Guyau 
now  does,  in  the  light  that  makes  probable  a  deep  sympathy 
between  the  inmost  nature  of  things  and  our  own  highest 
interests,  and  then  your  naturalism  will  no  longer  exclude 
the  hope  that  immortality,  if  not  already  in  the  possession 
of  the  present  humanity,  will  be  obtained  by  the  future 
race  as  the  result  of  further  evolution.  In  the  closing 
chapter  of  the  work  now  before  us,  and  with  a  literary  skill 
that  makes  this  eloquent  peroration  the  very  climax  of  our 
author's  artistic  efforts,  this  dying  invalid,  joyous  in  the 
face  of  death,  sets  down  the  speculations  which  occur  to  him 
concerning  the  last  great  mystery.  One  cannot  prove  im- 
mortality; but  does  our  knowledge  of  nature  tend  to  ex- 
clude its  possibility  ?  Here  the  sociological  view  of  man's 
nature  comes  to  our  philosopher's  aid.  Man  could  not  sur- 
vive merely  by  virtue  of  the  survival  of  a  soul-substance. 
Man  must  survive  as  a  conscious  being.  But  then  con- 
sciousness is  social.  One  lives  in  one's  common  life  with 
others.  Why  is  it  not  possible  that,  if  sufficient  social  unity, 
sufficient  quasi-telepathic  interrelationship  came  to  be  estab- 
lished amongst  minds,  one  individual,  in  the  course  of 
human  evolution,  could  come  actually  to  live  as  consciously, 


JEAN  MARIE  GUYAU.  383 

as  genuinely,  in  the  midst  of  the  very  mental  life  of  those 
whom  he  loves,  as  in  what  is  now  called  his  own  mental 
life  ?  At  present,  when  our  friends  die,  their  memory  re- 
mains, love  holds  them,  and  they  seem  to  live  on,  because 
they  live  for  us,  in  our  love.  Suppose  that  the  group  of 
mental  states  that  now  constitute  my  memory  of  my  friend 
became  as  warm,  as  full  of  movement  and  spontaneity,  as 
independently  active,  as  are  now  the  states  of  mind  of  my 
living  friend.  Suppose  that  this  spontaneity  went  so  far  as 
to  establish  a  continuity  of  memory  between  this  living 
image  of  my  friend  and  his  real  past  Would  not  my 
friend  then  live  on  in  my  love  ?  And  if  many  loved  him 
so,  if  in  social  intercourse  all  their  loving  images  united 
into  one,  might  not,  upon  some  higher  plane  of  evolution, 
love  hold  its  own  forever,  and  the  beloved  survive,  not  as 
voiceless  memories,  but  as  speaking  comrades,  sustained  in 
life  by  the  activities  of  other  organisms  than  used  to  be 
theirs,  but  genuinely  alive,  in  precisely  whatever  was  most 
ideal  and  lovable  about  them  ?  These  are  indeed  bold 
speculations,  and  Guyau  fully  knows  the  fact  But  reasons 
Guyau,  we  stand,  as  we  study  some  of  the  newer  psychologi- 
cal oddities,  upon  the  borderland  of  mysteries  hitherto  un- 
dreamed of  as  to  the  relation  of  mind  and  mind.  And  so 
we  have  still  our  right  to  hope. 

As  for  death  as  it  is,  one,  by  facing  it  frequently,  may 
get  quite  used  to  it,  says  Guyau.  "  Death,  for  the  rest,"  so  he 
concludes — "  death  for  the  philosopher,  that  friend  of  every 
unknown,  offers  still  the  attraction  of  something  that  is 
yet  to  be  known.  It  is,  after  birth,  the  most  mysterious 
novelty  of  tin-  individual's  life.  Death  lias  its  secret  its 
enigma,  and  one  keeps  the  vague  hope  that  it  will  solve  that 
enigma  by  one  last  irony  even  as  it  crushes  you,  that  the 
dying,  as  the  old  faith  had  it,  prophesy,  and  their  eyes  only 
close  because  dazzled  by  a  flash  of  light  Our  last  sorrow 
remains— our  last  curiosity ! " 
26 


384  STUDIES  OF  GOOD  AND  EVIL. 

In  this  paper  I  have  not  desired  to  criticise,  but  to  por- 
tray. I  beg  to  introduce  to  you  in  this  way  one  to  whose 
immortality,  if  his  brilliant  conjecture  be  right,  you  may 
perchance  joyously  contribute,  by  finding  him  a  very  gra- 
cious, ingenious,  and  abiding  friend. 


THE  END. 


BY  EMINENT  SCIENTISTS. 


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II.  The  Inductions  of  Biology.     III.  The  Evolution  of  Life. 

3.  The  Principles  of  Biology.     Vol.  2.   IV.  Morphological  Devel- 

opment.    V.  Physiological    Development.     VI.  Laws  of  Mul- 
tiplication. 

4.  The    Principles    of   Psychology.      Vol.  I.      I.  The   Data  of 

Psychology.    II.   The  Inductions  of  Psychology.    III.  General 
Synthesis.     IV.  Special  Synthesis.     V.  Physical  Synthesis. 

5.  The  Principles  of  Psychology.     Vol.  2.    VI.  Special  Analysis. 

VII.  General  Analysis.     VIII.   Congruities.     IX.  Corollaries. 

6.  The  Principles  of  Sociology.     Vol.  i.     I.  The  Data  of  Soci- 

ology.    II.  The  Inductions  of  Sociology.     III.  The  Domestic 
Relations. 

7.  The  Principles  of  Sociology.     Vol.  2.     IV.  Ceremonial  Insti- 

tutions.    V.  Political  Institutions. 

8.  The  Principles  of  Sociology.     Vol.  3.     VI.  Ecclesiastical  In- 

stitutions.     VII.   Professional    Institutions.      VIII.  Industrial 
Institutions. 

9.  The   Principles   of    Ethic*.     Vol.  I.     I.  The  Data  of  Ethics. 

II.  The  Inductions  of  Ethics.     III.  The  Ethics  of  Individual 
Life. 

io.  The  Principles  of  Ethics.  Vol.  2.  IV.  The  Ethics  of  Social 
Life  :  Justice.  V  The  Ethics  of  Social  Life  :  Negative  Benefi- 
cence. VI.  The  Ethics  of  Social  Life:  Positive  Beneficence. 

D.    APPLE  TON     AND    COMPANY,     NEW    YORK. 


SPENCER'S  MISCELLANEOUS  WORKS. 


Social  Statics. 

New  and  revised  edition,  including  "  The  Man  versus  The  State." 
A  series  of  essays  on  political  tendencies,  heretofore  published  sep- 
arately. I2mo,  420  pages.  Cloth,  $2.00. 

"  Mr.  Spencer  has  thoroughly  studied  the  issues  which  are  behind  the  social  and 
political  life  of  our  own  time,  not  exactly  those  issues  which  are  discussed  in  Parlia- 
ment or  in  Congress,  but  the  principles  of  all  modern  government,  which  are  slowly 
changing  in  response  to  the  broader  industrial  and  general  development  of  human 
experience.  One  will  obtain  no  suggestions  out  of  his  book  for  guiding  a  political 
party  or  carrying  a  point  in  economics,  but  he  will  find  the  principles  of  sociology, 
as  they  pertain  to  the  whole  of  life,  better  stated  in  these  pages  than  he  can  find  them 
expressed  anywhere  else.  It  is  in  this  sense  that  this  work  is  important  and  fresh 
and  vitalizing.  It  goes  constantly  to  the  foundation  of  things." — Boston  Herald. 

Facts  and  Comments. 

Uniform  edition.  I2mo.  Cloth,  $1.20  net ;  postage,  12  cents  addi- 
tional. 

From  the  analytical  brain  of  a  philosopher  of  the  greatness  of  Herbert  Spencer — 
a  greatness  that  has  extended  over  more  than  two  generations — the  subjects  treated 
in  this,  his  last  volume,  assume  a  commanding  importance.  Such  topics  as  "Ameri- 
canisms," "Presence of  Mind,"  "The  Corruption  of  Music,"  "The  Origin  and  De- 
velopment of  Music,"  "Estimates  of  Men,  "State  Education,"  etc.,  are  invested 
with  a  life  and  actuality  only  possible  under  his  stimulating  treatment. 

Various  Fragments. 

I2mo.     Cloth,  $1.25. 

Along  with  a  considerable  variety  of  other  matter,  these  "  Fragments  "  include  » 
number  of  replies  to  criticisms,  among  which  will  be  found  some  of  the  best  speci- 
mens of  Mr.  Spencer's  controversial  writings,  notably  his  letter  to  the  London  Atkt- 
ntrum  on  Professor  Huxley's  famous  address  on  Evolutionary  Ethics.  His  views  on 
copyright,  national  and  international,  "  Social  Evolution  and  Social  Duty,"  and 
"Anglo-American  Arbitration,"  also  form  a  part  of  the  contents. 

Education :  Intellectual,  Moral,  and  Physical. 

I2mo.     Cloth,  $1.25  ;  paper,  50  cents. 

CONTENTS. — What  Knowledge  is  of  most  Worth  ?  Intellectual  Education.  Mora) 
Education.  Physical  Education. 

The  Study  of  Sociology. 

(The  fifth  volume  in  the  International  Scientific  Series.)  I2mo. 
Cloth,  $1.50. 

CONTENTS. — Our  Need  of  it.  Is  there  a  Social  Science  ?  Nature  o_f  the  Social 
Science.  Difficulties  of  the  Social  Science.  Objective  Difficulties.  Subjective  Diffi- 
culties, Intellectual.  Subjective  Difficulties,  Emotional.  The  Educational  Bias. 
The  Bias  of  Patriotism.  The  Class  Bias.  The  Political  Bias.  The  Theological 
Bias.  Discipline.  Preparation  in  Biology.  Preparation  in  Psychology.  Conclusion. 

D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY,     NEW    YORK. 


PROF.  JOSEPH  LE  CONTFS  BOOKS. 

The  Comparative  Physiology  and  Morphology 
of  Animals. 

Illustrated.      i  zme.      Cloth,  $2.00. 

The  work  of  Darwin  on  the  derivation  of  species  and  the  descent  of  man 
•wakened  a  new  interest  in  the  lower  animals,  and  furnished  additional  evidence 
of  their  close  kinship  with  ourselves.  A  fresh  field  of  study  was  thus  opened 
up,  embracing  the  likenesses  and  differences  of  action  as  well  as  structure  found 
throughout  the  animal  kingdom.  In  this  work  Professor  Le  Conte  gives  us, 
in  his  well-known  clear  and  simple  style  and  with  the  aid  of  numerous  illustra- 
tions, an  interesting  outline  of  these  similarities  and  variations  of  function  as 
displayed  among  the  various  classes  of  animals  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest, 
man  included. 

Religion  and  Science. 

A  Series  of  Sunday  Lectures  on  the  Relation  of  Natural  and 
Revealed  Religion,  or  the  Truths  revealed  in  Nature  and  Scripture. 
izmo.  Cloth,  $1.50. 

Elements  of  Geology. 

A  Text-Book  for  Colleges  and  for  the  General  Reader.  With 
new  Plates,  new  Illustrations,  new  Matter,  fully  revised  to  date. 
8vo.  Cloth,  $4.00. 

Sight. 

An  Exposition  of  the  Principle*  of  Monocular  and  Binocular 
Vision.  With  Illustrations.  Second  edition.  No.  31,  Inter- 
national Scientific  Series.  I  zmo.  Cloth,  $  1 . 50. 

Evolution  and  its  Relation  to  Religious  Thought. 
Revised  edition,      iz  mo.     Cloth,  $  1. 50. 

D.     APPLETON     AND     COMPANY,     NEW     YORK. 


BOOKS  BY  CHARLES  DARWIN,  LL.D.,  F.R.S. 

Origin  of  Species  by  Means  of  Natural  Selection  ;  or,  The 
Preservation  of  Favored  Races  in  the  Struggle  for  Life.  From 
sixth  and  last  London  edition.  2  vols.  I2mo.  Cloth,  $4.00. 

Descent  of  Man,  and  Selection  in  Relation  to  Sex.  Many 
Illustrations.  A  new  edition.  I2mo.  Cloth,  $3.00. 

A  Naturalist's  Voyage  around  the  World.  Journal  of  Researches 
into  the  Natural  History  and  Geology  of  Countries  visited  during 
the  Voyage  of  H.  M.  S.  "  Beagle."  Maps  and  100  Views,  chiefly 
from  sketches,  by  R.  T.  PRITCHETT.  8vo.  Cloth,  $5.00.  Also 
popular  edition.  I2mo.  Cloth,  $2.00. 

The  Structure  and  Distribution  of  Coral  Reefs.  Based  on 
Observations  made  during  the  Voyage  of  the  "  Beagle."  Charts 
and  Illustrations.  121110.  Cloth,  $2.00. 

Geological  Observations  on  the  Volcanic  Islands  and  Parts  of 
South  America  visited  during  the  Voyage  of  the  "  Beagle."  Maps 
and  Illustrations.  I2mo.  Cloth,  $2.50. 

Emotional   Expressions   of   Man    and    the    Lower  Animals. 

I2mo.     Cloth,  $3.50. 

The  Variations  of  Animals  and  Plants  under  Domestication. 
Preface  by  Prof.  ASA  GRAY.  2  vols.  Illustrations.  Cloth,  $5.00. 

Insectivorous  Plants.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $2.00. 

Movements  and  Habits  of  Climbing  Plants.  Illustrations. 
I2mo.  Cloth,  $1.25. 

The  Various  Contrivances  by  which  Orchids  are  Fertilized 
by  Insects.  Revised  edition.  Illustrations.  i2mo.  Cloth,  $1.75. 

The  Effects  of  Cross  and  Self  Fertilization  in  the  Vegetable 
Kingdom.  121110.  Cloth.  $2.00. 

Different  Forms  of  Flowers  on  Plants  of  the  same  Species. 
Illustrations.  I2mo.  Cloth,  (1.50. 

The  Power  of  Movement  in  Plants.  Assisted  by  FRANCIS 
DARWIN.  Illustrations.  i2mo.  Cloth,  $2.00. 

The  Formation  of  Vegetable  Mould  through  the  Action  of 
Worms,  with  Observations  on  their  Habits.  Illustrations. 
i2mo.  Cloth,  $1.50. 

D.     APPLETON     AND     COMPANY,     NEW    YORK. 


THE  BEST  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 


Jesus  Christ:   A  History  of  Our  Saviour's  Per- 
son, Mission,  and  Spirit. 

By  PERE  DIDON,  O.  P.  With  an  Introduction  by  His 
Eminence  James,  Cardinal  Gibbons.  Edited  by  Right 
Rev.  Bernard  O'Reilly,  D.  D. :  D.  Lit.  (Laval).  Profusely 
illustrated  with  Maps,  Photogravure  reproductions  of 
Celebrated  Paintings  by  the  Old  Masters,  and  Woodcuts 
of  Scenes  in  the  Holy  Land,  engraved  from  Sketches 
made  by  our  own  Artists. 

Complete  in  Two  Large  Octavo  Volumes  of  about  500  pages  each,  hand- 
somely bound  in  Extra  Cloth,  with  embellished  cover,  $5.00. 

The  original  edition  of  Pere  Didon's  great  work  in  the  French  language 
has  already  reached  a  sale  of  more  than  Twenty  Editions.  Not  in  many 
years  has  a  similar  book  been  published  that  has  attracted  more  attention 
abroad,  or  been  received  by  the  foreign  reviewers  with  such  enthusiastic  and 
unstinted  praise.  The  work  of  Pere  Didon  is  commended  to  all— Roman 
Catholics  or  Protestants— as  being  one  of  the  most  powerful  and  intensely 
interesting  contributions  to  Ecclesiastical  Literature  that  have  appeared  in 
recent  years. 

"To  write  for  those  who  believe,  is  well ;  but  to  write  for  those  who  do 
not  believe,  or  who  are  troubled  with  doubts — who  are  either  indifferent  or 
hostile— is  much  better.  These  are  the  persons  who  will  be  attracted  and 
captivated  by  Pere  Didon's  'Jesus  Christ."'— .£*  Gauloit. 

"  Most  heartily  do  we  congratulate  the  author  on  his  having  sought  to 
render  attractive  and  pleasing  for  the  cultivated  public  of  our  day  the  life  of 
Our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  without  either  changing  or  abbreviating  the  text 
of  the  Gospels." — Revut  Bibliograpkique  et  Litttraire. 

"This  work,  so  long  and  carefully  prepared  and  so  much  spoken  of  in 
advance,  has  had  from  its  first  appearance  a  splendid  success.  This  success 
is  well  deserved.  Polemics,  the  refutation  of  rationalistic  criticism,  take  up 
a  relatively  small  place,  and  the  author  is  to  be  warmly  congratulated  there- 
upon. A  Life  of  Christ,  in  accordance  with  the  views  of  such  critics,  would 
have  been  read  by  but  a  small  number  of  persons.  The  broad  and  imposing 
plan  on  which  Pere  Didon  conceived  his  work  will  secure  to  him  daily  thou- 
sands upon  thousands  of  readers.  The  literary  form  given  to  the  book  is 
worthy  of  the  subject.  The  diction  is  elevated,  like  the  thoughts  it  clothes." 
— Revtu  Bibliogr&phiqiu  Universellt. 

D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY,    NEW     YORK. 


NEW  EDITION  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEVS  ESSAYS. 

Collected  Essays. 

By  THOMAS  H.  HUXLEY.  New  complete 
edition,  with  revisions,  the  Essays  being 
grouped  according  to  general  subject.  In 
nine  volumes,  a  new  Introduction  accom- 
panying each  volume.  I2mo.  Cloth,  $1.25 
per  volume. 

Vol. 

I.  Methods  and  Results. 
II.  Darwiniana. 

III.  Science  and  Education. 

IV.  Science  and  Hebrew  Tradition. 
V.  Science  and  Christian  Tradition. 

VI.  Hume. 

VII.  Man's  Place  in  Nature. 
VIII.  Discourses,  Biological  and  Geological. 
IX.  Evolution  and  Ethics,  and  Other  Essays. 

"  Mr.  Huxley  has  covered  a  vast  variety  of  topics  during 
the  last  quarter  of  a  century.  It  gives  one  an  agreeable  surprise 
to  look  over  the  tables  of  contents  and  note  the  immense  territory 
which  be  has  explored.  To  read  these  books  carefully  and 
wudiously  is  to  become  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  most 
advanced  thought  on  a  large  number  of  topics." — New  T<)rk 
Herald. 

D.     APPLETON     AND      COMPANY,     NEW     YORK 


BOOKS   BY   JOHN   TYNDALL,   LL.  P.,  F.RS. 

Essays   on   the   Floating  Matter   of  the  Air  in 
Relation  to  Putrefaction  and  Infection. 

Illustrations.     12010.     Cloth,  $1.50. 

Forms  of  Water  in  Clouds  and  Rivers,  Ice  and 
Glaciers. 

( International  Scientific  Series.)    12010.     Cloth,  (1.50. 

Heat  as  a  Mode  of  Motion. 

New  edition.     12010.     Cloth,  $2.50. 

Sound. 

12010.     Cloth,  $2.00. 

Fragments  of  Science  for  Unscientific  People. 

A   Series  of   Detached  Essays,   Lectures,  and   Reviews.     Revised  and 
enlarged  edition,     izmo.     Cloth,  $2.00. 

Light  and  Electricity. 

Notes  of  Two  Courses  of  Lectures  before  the  Royal  Institution  of  Great 
Britain.     12010.     Cloth,  $1.25. 

Lessons  in  Electricity,  Royal  Institution,  i875-'76. 

i2iuo.     Cloth,  $1.00. 

Hours  of  Exercise  in  the  Alps. 

With  Illustrations.     I2mo.     Cloth,  $2.00. 

Faraday  as  a  Discoverer. 

A  Memoir,     tamo.     Cloth,  fi.oo. 

Contributions     to     Molecular     Physics     in    the 
Domain  of  Radiant  Heat. 

Memoirs  published  in  the  "Philosophical  Transactions "  and  "  Philo- 
sophical Magazine."     With  additions.    8vo.     $5.00. 

Six  Lectures  on  Light. 

Delivered  in  America  in  it>72-*73.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $1.50. 

Address  delivered  before  the  British  Association 
assembled  at  Belfast. 

Revised,     i  zmo.     Paper,  50  cents. 

Researches  on  Diamagnetism  and  Magne-Crys- 
tallic  Action. 

Including  the  Question  of   Diamagnetie   Polarity.     10  Plate*.     lamo. 
Cloth,  $1.50. 

New  Fragments. 

i -•inn.      Cloth,  $2.OO. 
D.     API'LKTON     AND     COMPANY,     NEW     YORK- 


THE  PERENNIAL  CONFLICT. 
The  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology. 

A  History  of  the  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology  in 
Christendom.  By  ANDREW  DICKSON  WHITE,  LL.  D.  (Yale), 
L.  H.  D.  (Col),  Ph.D.  (Jena),  late  President  and  Professor 
of  History  at  Cornell  University.  2  vols.  8vo.  Cloth,  $5.00. 

"  Able,  scholarly,  critical,  impartial  in  tone  and  exhaustive  in  treat- 
ment."— Boston  Advertiser. 

"  The  most  valuable  contribution  that  has  yet  been  made  to  the 
history  of  the  conflicts  between  the  theologists  and  the  scientists." — 
Buffalo  Commercial. 

"  A  work  which  constitutes  in  many  ways  the  most  instructive  review 
that  has  ever  been  written  of  the  evolution  of  human  knowledge  in  its 
conflict  with  dogmatic  belief." — Boston  Beacon. 

"  The  same  liberal  spirit  that  marked  his  public  life  is  seen  in  the 
pages  of  his  book,  giving  it  a  zest  and  interest  that  can  not  fail  to  secure 
for  it  hearty  commendation  and  honest  praise." — Philadelphia  Public 
Ledger. 

"  Such  an  honest  and  thorough  treatment  of  the  subject  in  all  its 
bearings  that  it  will  carry  weight  and  be  accepted  as  an  authority 
in  tracing  the  process  by  which  the  scientific  method  has  come  to  be 
supreme  in  modern  thought  and  life." — Boston  Herald. 

"  The  story  of  the  struggle  of  searchers  after  truth  with  the  organ- 
ized forces  of  ignorance,  bigotry,  and  superstition  is  the  most  inspiring 
chapter  in  the  whole  history  of  mankind.  That  story  has  never  been 
better  told  than  by  the  ex-President  of  Cornell  University  in  these  two 
volumes." — London  Daily  Chronicle. 

"  It  is  graphic,  lucid,  even-tempered — never  bitter  nor  vindictive. 
No  student  of  human  progress  should  fail  to  read  these  volumes. 
While  they  have  about  them  the  fascination  of  a  well-told  tale,  they 
are  also  crowded  with  the  facts  of  history  that  have  had  a  tremendous 
bearing  upon  the  development  of  the  race." — Brooklyn  Eagle. 

D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY,  NEW  YORK. 


NOTABLE  WORKS  IN  PHILOSOPHY. 

A  History  of  Philosophy  in  Epitome. 

By  ALBERT  SCHWEGLER.  Translated  from  the  first 
edition  of  the  original  German  by  Julius  H.  Seelye. 
Revised  from  the  ninth  German  edition,  containing  Im- 
portant Additions  and  Modifications,  with  an  Appendix, 
continuing  the  History  in  its  more  Prominent  Lines  of 
Development  since  the  Time  of  Hegel,  by  Benjamin  T. 
Smith.  i2tno.  Cloth,  $2.00. 

"  Scbwegler's  '  History  of  Philosophy '  is  found  in  the  hands  of  almost 
every  student  in  the  philosophical  department  of  a  German  university,  and  is 
highly  esteemed  for  its  clearness,  conciseness,  and  comprehensiveness.  The 
present  translation  was  undertaken  with  the  conviction  that  the  work  would 
not  lose  its  interest  or  its  value  in  an  English  dress,  and  with  the  hope  that 
it  might  be  of  wider  service  in  such  a  form  to  students  of  philosophy  here." 
— From  tke  Preface. 

Biographical    History    of    Philosophy,    from    its 
Origin  in  Greece  down  to  the  Present  Day. 
By  GEORGE  HENRY  LEWES.     Library  Edition,  much 
enlarged  and  thoroughly  revised.     8vo.     Cloth,  $3.50. 

•'  Philosophy  was  the  great  initiator  of  science.  It  rescued  the  nobler 
part  of  man  from  the  dominion  of  brutish  apathy  and  helpless  ignorance, 
nourished  his  mind  with  mighty  impulses,  exercised  it  in  magnificent  efforts, 
gave  him  the  unslaked,  unslakable  thirst  for  knowledge  which  has  dignified 
his  life,  and  enabled  him  to  multiply  tenfold  his  existence  and  his  happiness. 
Having  done  this,  its  part  is  played.  Our  interest  in  it  now  is  purely  his- 
torical. The  purport  of  this  history  is  to  show  how  and  why  the  interest  in 
philosophy  has  become  purely  historical. " — From  the  Introduction. 

Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Philosophy. 

By  WILLIAM  T.  HARRIS,  LL.  D.,  United  States  Com- 
missioner  of  Education.  Compiled  and  arranged  by 
MARIETTA  KIES.  izmo.  Cloth,  $1.50. 

"  Philosophy  at  presented  by  Dr.  Harris  gives  to  the  student  an  interpre- 
tation and  explanation  of  the  phases  of  existence  which  render  even  the 
ordinary  affairs  of  life  in  accordance  with  reason  ;  and  for  the  higher  or 
spiritual  phases  of  life  his  interpretations  have  the  power  of  a  great  illumi- 
nation."— From  tkt  Comfiltr's  /*rt/act. 

D.    APPLETON    AND     COMPANY,     NEW    YORK. 


"  Destined  to  take  rank  as  one  of  the  two  or  three 
most  remarkable  self-portrayals  of  a  human  life  ever 
committed  to  posterity." 

— Franklin  H.  Giddings,  LL.D.,  in  the  Independent. 


An  Autobiography  by  Herbert  Spencer. 

With  Illustrations.  Many  of  them  from  the 
Author's  Own  Drawings.  Cloth,  8vo.  Gilt  Top. 
Two  vols.  in  a  box,  $5.50  net.  Postage,  40  cents 
additional. 

"It  is  rare,  indeed,  that  a  man  who  has  so  profoundly  influenced  the 
intellectual  development  of  his  age  and  generation  has  found  time  to 
record  the  history  of  his  own  life.  And  this  Mr.  Spencer  has  done  so 
simply,  so  frankly,  and  with  such  obvious  truth,  that  it  is  not  surprising 
that  Huxley  is  reported  as  having  said,  after  reading  it  in  manuscript, 
that  it  reminded  him  of  the  '  Confessions '  of  Rousseau,  freed  from  every 
objectionable  taint." — New  York  Globe. 

"  As  interesting  as  fiction  ?  There  never  was  a  novel  so  interesting 
as  Herbert  Spencer's  'An  Autobiography '." — New  York  Herald. 

"  It  is  rich  in  suggestion  and  observation,  of  wide  significance  and 
appeal  in  the  sincerity,  the  frankness,  the  lovableness  of  its  human  note." 

— New  York  Mail  and  Express. 

"  The  book,  as  a  whole,  makes  Spencer's  personality  a  reality  for 
us,  where  heretofore  it  has  been  vaguer  than  his  philosophical  abstrac- 
tions."— -John  White  Chadwick  in  Current  Literature. 

"  In  all  the  literature  of  its  class  there  is  nothing  like  it.  It  bears 
the  same  relationship  to  autobiographical  productions  as  Boswell's  '  Life 
of  Johnson  '  bears  to  biographies." — Philadelphia  Press. 

"  This  book  will  always  be  of  importance,  for  Herbert  Spencer  was 

a  great  and  original  thinker,  and  his  system  of  philosophy  has  bent  the 

thought  of  a  generation,  and  will  keep  a  position  of  commanding  interest." 

— Joseph  O'Connor  in  the  New  York  Times 

"  Planned  and  wrought  for  the  purpose  of  tracing  the  events  of  his 
life  and  the  growth  of  his  opinions,  his  autobiography  does  more  than 
that.  It  furnished  us,  half  unconsciously,  no  doubt,  a  more  vivid  por- 
traiture of  his  peculiarities  than  any  outsider  could  possibly  provide. 
We  pity  his  official  biographer!  Little  can  be  left  for  him.  Here  we 
have  Spencer  in  habit  as  he  was." — New  York  Evening  Post. 

D.    APPLETON     AND     COMPANY,    NEW     YORK. 


THE  LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
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